The fee everyone was budgeting for is gone. The money did not get cheaper.

On September 18, 2026 the Public Utility Commission of Texas filed its Order Adopting New 16 TAC §25.194, Project No. 58481, Item 218. Two hundred and seventy pages implementing PURA §37.0561 as enacted by SB 6. The rule takes effect October 8, 2026.

The headline writes itself, and it is accurate. One sentence on page 12: the commission also modifies the adopted rule to remove the interconnection fee under the SLLIA.

Every owner model built against the March proposal carried a non-refundable charge at agreement execution. That charge is gone. Anyone still quoting it is quoting a document the commission superseded today.

Now the part that will not make the summaries. Removing the fee did not reduce what a large load customer posts. It changed what the posting is, and the thing it changed into is governed by a formula with a subtraction in front of it and a release schedule tied to an agreement that does not exist yet.

Security is not a fee, and the commission said so on purpose

The rule is explicit about the distinction. Responding to EDF, the commission wrote that the recommendation with respect to the interconnection fee is moot because the commission modifies the adopted rule to remove the interconnection fee, and then added: financial security remains a requirement to protect against stranded infrastructure costs and is not a fee.

That is not throat-clearing. It is the whole design.

At SLLIA execution the large load customer posts financial security in an amount that is the greater of $50,000 per MW of contracted peak demand or the costs allocated to that customer for system upgrades as a result of an interconnection study.

Read the operator on that sentence. It is the greater of, not the sum, and not a cap. For a project whose study lands lightly, the per-MW floor governs and the number is predictable. For a project that triggers real system upgrades, the study output governs and the posting is whatever the upgrades cost. A 240 MW campus at the floor posts twelve million dollars. The same campus with study-allocated upgrades above that figure posts the upgrades instead, and nothing in the rule caps the distance between those two outcomes.

So the cost that owners could previously bound before the study is now, for a meaningful share of projects, unbounded until the study returns.

The improvement is real, and it is in the crediting

Two changes move genuinely in the owner's favor, and they deserve to be stated plainly rather than buried under the caveats.

A large load customer may elect to apply cash collateral posted as financial security under an intermediate agreement as a credit toward the financial security requirements under a SLLIA. The pre-study posting is not a second, separate payment. It carries forward.

Two conditions sit on that. Only cash collateral is creditable. A guaranty or a letter of credit is returned rather than applied, which means an owner who optimized the intermediate stage for balance sheet efficiency by posting an LC gets that instrument back and then funds the SLLIA posting fresh. The financing sequence matters more than the financing cost here.

And the credit operates on election. An owner who says nothing gets the default. Know which default your utility applies before the intermediate agreement is signed, not after.

The return schedule is where the modeling breaks

The commission rejected the proposal to return 80 percent at energization. What it adopted instead: the interconnecting DSP or TSP must return 20 percent of the remaining balance of financial security when the large load customer energizes, and the remainder ratably in 20 percent increments as the customer meets the milestones identified in its SLLIA for meeting its obligation to pay the large load minimum billing demand.

Three things in that sentence change a cash model.

First, 20 percent at energization, not 80. The bulk of the posting stays with the utility past commercial operation.

Second, and this is the phrase to carry into your model: 20 percent of the remaining balance. Not 20 percent of the original posting. The rule directs the utility to apply security to any outstanding amounts owed and refund what remains. Anything you owe at energization comes out first, and the percentage runs against the reduced figure. An owner who arrives at energization with an open invoice does not get a haircut on one payment. Every subsequent increment is computed off a smaller base. The subtraction compounds through the whole release schedule.

Third, the milestones that release the remaining 80 percent are the milestones identified in the customer's SLLIA. Which brings us to the thing that actually matters.

The agreement that assigns responsibility has not been written

The commission declined to specify each party's responsibilities in this rule. Its stated reason, repeated across multiple responses to commenters: that level of detail will be addressed in a separate rulemaking to adopt a SLLIA, which will set forth each entity's responsibilities.

So the rule adopted today sets the amount you post and ties its release to milestones defined in a form contract the commission has not yet drafted.

For a campus owner that is not an administrative gap. It is the live drafting battleground, and it is open right now. The milestone definitions in that form determine when your capital comes back. Whether a milestone is met at capacity availability or at tenant energization, whether partial phases count, whether a tenant's delay is your missed milestone: none of that is settled, and all of it is worth more to a phased campus than the fee that was removed today.

The owners who show up to that rulemaking will be arguing about their own money. The ones who read today's coverage, note that a fee disappeared, and move on will inherit whatever the utilities draft.

What a phased campus should do before October 8

The rule applies to a large load customer that has not energized as of the effective date. Queue position does not exempt a project. If you are not energized on October 8, you are inside this rule.

Four things are worth doing in the next three weeks.

Re-run the posting against the greater-of test using contracted peak demand, not nameplate and not tenant-requested capacity. Contracted peak demand is now a defined regulatory term attached to real money, which makes it the correct basis for anything sized per MW, including advisory fees written against capacity.

Model the release schedule as 20 percent of a declining balance with your own outstanding amounts subtracted first, and then look at what your covenant tests do when that capital returns two years later than the March proposal implied.

Decide the instrument at the intermediate stage deliberately. Cash credits forward. An LC does not.

And read the one clause in your tenant leases that today's rule just repriced: the minimum billing demand pass-through. Security release is tied to paying minimum billing demand. If that obligation commences at capacity availability rather than at tenant energization, and Project No. 58000 is live on exactly that question with a December 31 statutory deadline, an owner who has not passed those terms through on identical terms is holding a take-or-pay on capacity a tenant never energizes, while also waiting on the security release that the same payment unlocks.

That is the exposure worth an afternoon this week. Not the fee.

---

Verified against the Order Adopting New 16 TAC §25.194, Project No. 58481, Item 218, filed September 18, 2026, and the Texas Register acknowledgement at Item 219. Effective date October 8, 2026. This is analysis of an adopted rule, not legal advice. The SLLIA form rulemaking and Project No. 58000 remain open, and conclusions that depend on them should be revisited as those proceed.