Bitcoin miners have found a new way to flex.
In 2021, they competed on mining machine preorders and exahashes promised. In 2024 and 2025, the contest shifted toward HPC contracts: who could sign a major customer and announce the biggest deal. Now the competition reaches further upstream, to the electricity those computing ambitions require.
Over the past week, a flurry of ERCOT Batch Zero announcements shows how a power arms race is playing out, with companies turning their standing in the Texas interconnection process into a public measure of competitive strength.
IREN highlighted conditional Base Load status for its 2 GW Sweetwater hub. Hut 8 flagged the designation for Beacon Point. Soluna announced it for the full 166 MW Kati campus. A technical grid classification has become something to put in a headline—a way to show that a company’s power plans have substance behind them.
But as in the hashrate race, the largest number does not tell the whole story. The classifications distinguish capacity that retains its position based on earlier studies from requests still awaiting allocation. Behind similar announcements, companies—and projects within the same company—can be at very different stages.
Galaxy’s September 8 disclosure illustrates the distinction. Five projects received conditional classifications covering approximately 4.2 GW. Of that, 1.63 GW at Helios I and II was classified as Base Load. Another 2.6 GW across Caspian, Selene and Helios III was classified as Studied Load, leaving it subject to capacity allocation.
One detail deserves particular attention: Galaxy submitted the 700 MW Caspian project as Base Load. ERCOT provisionally classified it as Studied Load. Even within one company, the headline gigawatts carry different levels of certainty.
The industry’s arms race has acquired a new scoreboard
In December 2021, MARA’s operating update offered a sharp distinction between current output and future capacity. It reported an active fleet producing approximately 3.5 EH/s, alongside purchases expected to bring its fleet to 23.3 EH/s by early 2023, which didn’t fully materialize until mid-2024.
The parallel today is the use of future capacity to establish competitive standing. Power always mattered to mining. What has changed is the prominence of grid access in the expansion story—and the possibility of using that access to serve a different computing market.
A machine order and a grid classification are different commitments, with different risks. Yet both invite the same analytical mistake: treating a milestone toward future production as though it were production already secured.
ERCOT’s predicament explains why a technical classification has become announcement-worthy.
When Texas regulators approved Batch Zero in June, ERCOT reported more than 438 GW of large-load connection requests, nearly 89% from data centers. By August 3, Governor Greg Abbott’s office cited more than 474 GW of requests, roughly 90% from data centers and more than five times ERCOT’s record peak demand. These figures measure proposed connections, not a forecast that every requested megawatt will materialize.
Studying projects individually becomes difficult when multiple campuses rely on the same transmission infrastructure. Batch Zero is the transitional group in ERCOT’s shift toward evaluating large loads together, assessing their combined effects and allocating available transmission capacity. The process generally concerns facilities of at least 75 MW with sufficient prior study work and development commitments.
Within that process, Base Load projects enter the study’s starting model without undergoing a new Batch Zero capacity allocation. Studied Load projects qualify for inclusion but still face evaluation and allocation. Projects that fail to qualify must proceed through a future interconnection process.
That makes Base Load a meaningful advantage. It also explains why “included in Batch Zero” is too broad a description for comparing developers.
CleanSpark, for example, disclosed conditional classifications for 585 MW as Base Load and 300 MW as Studied Load, a split it said was expected. Those numbers belong in separate columns when assessing its Texas portfolio.
Ionic Digital offered a more specific disclosure on Thursday. The company said its transmission provider, Texas-New Mexico Power, informed it that ERCOT had provisionally classified the remaining 466 MW requested at its Ward County campus as Base Load. Energizing that tranche would bring the campus’s total demand to 700 MW. Ionic continues to target completion by the end of 2027, subject to verification, the audit process and ERCOT’s final classification determination.
Cipher’s post on X, on the other hand, shows how much a headline number can leave unanswered. The company said initial feedback from its transmission service providers resulted in 3.2 GW of conditional Batch Zero classifications. It did not disclose how much was Base Load and how much was Studied Load, saying it was reviewing site-specific designations and would provide further details next week.
That missing breakdown is central to interpreting the announcement. Base Load capacity retains its position without a new Batch Zero allocation; Studied Load capacity remains subject to that exercise. Cipher’s 3.2 GW establishes the scale covered by its conditional classifications, but does not tell readers how much falls into each category.
The distinction also captures the dynamics of the new power arms race: companies can announce a large number before investors have the information needed to compare it with competitors’ portfolios. Cipher’s promised follow-up will help establish what sits behind the total.
The word “conditional” adds another layer.
Abbott’s August directive required verification and an audit of data centers advancing through the interconnection process. ERCOT subsequently issued provisional classifications. Its September 3 notice identifies possible conditions including successful verification, corrections to technical modeling data and regulatory exceptions where eligibility requirements were not met. Failure to satisfy an applicable condition can disqualify a project.
The companies’ disclosures do not consistently identify which conditions apply to each site. A project awaiting verification and one requiring an eligibility exception have different unresolved issues, even if both describe their status as conditional.
For readers following the mining industry’s AI expansion, the useful comparison is therefore project by project: capacity already operating, capacity preserved as Base Load, requested capacity still awaiting allocation, and the remaining steps before customers can use it.
The 2021 announcements asked investors to look forward from machine orders to future hashrate. Today’s power announcements ask them to look forward from grid access to future computing revenue. Batch Zero makes some of those paths clearer. The next test is how many of the headline megawatts become operating facilities—and when.
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