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Woodlands company licenses free patents to ERCOT to boost grid reliability

grid deal

The Woodlands-based Lancium has licensed patents to ERCOT that help increase or decrease power consumption during peak periods or emergencies. Photo courtesy of ERCOT

Lancium, a company based in The Woodlands that specializes in infrastructure for connecting large-scale data centers to power grids, is licensing a portfolio of patents to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) at no cost.

In a news release, Lancium says the intellectual property agreement “ensures ERCOT can sublicense these patents freely, thereby expanding market participation opportunities without risk of patent infringement disputes.”

“This agreement exemplifies Lancium’s dedication to supporting grid stability and innovation across the ERCOT region,” Michael McNamara, CEO of Lancium, said in a news release. “While these patents represent significant technological advancements, we believe that enabling ERCOT and its market participants to operate freely is more valuable for the long-term reliability and resilience of the Texas grid.”

The licensed patents encompass Lancium technologies that support load resources in ERCOT’s market, which covers about 90 percent of Texas. Specifically, the patents deal with controllable load resources. A controlled load resource allows ERCOT and other grids to increase or decrease power consumption during peak periods or emergencies.

ERCOT predicts power demand in Texas will nearly double by 2030, “in part due to more requests to plug into the grid from large users like data centers, crypto mining facilities, hydrogen production plants, and oil and gas companies,” The Texas Tribune reported.

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Crusoe Energy Systems announced its plans to build the 200 MW data center at the Lancium Clean Campus outside Abilene, Texas. Photo via lancium.com

Houston-area company specializing in creating clean campuses announces new data center project

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A California AI infrastructure company has announced it's building a 200 megawatt data center in Texas and will work with The Woodlands-based Lancium, a decarbonization-focused energy technology company.

Crusoe Energy Systems LLC announced its plans to build the 200 MW data center at the Lancium Clean Campus outside Abilene, Texas. The two companies will work to bring the data center online in the coming months, reports Lancium in a news release. Once completed, the first phase will enable AI workloads at scale across 1.2 gigawatts of power capacity.

“Lancium’s mission to decarbonize compute for the most energy-intensive workloads and this scale and type of data center is game-changing,” Michael McNamara, co-founder and CEO of Lancium, says in the release. “Our energy management expertise, the integration of incremental storage and solar generation resources behind-the-meter at the campus, and Crusoe’s design approach will combine to deliver the maximum amount of green energy at the lowest possible cost, while bringing significant benefits to the Abilene community.”

Lancium's role will include "land acquisition, power interconnect, site engineering, renewables interconnect, and power orchestration," per the release. Crusoe will own and develop the data center, which is expected to go online in 2025.

“Data centers are rapidly evolving to support modern AI workloads, requiring new levels of high density rack space, direct-to-chip liquid cooling and unprecedented overall energy demands. We’ve designed this data center to enable the largest clusters of GPUs in the world to drive new breakthroughs in AI,” adds Chase Lochmiller, Crusoe’s co-founder and CEO. “Given its leadership in renewable energy and plans for the site, working with Lancium in Abilene presents a unique opportunity to sustainably power the future of AI and we’re thrilled to have the support of the city in this ambitious endeavor.”

According to the release, the project will feature direct-to-chip liquid cooling or rear-door heat exchangers and will be flexible enough to include air cooling. Once completed, each building within the data center will be able to operate up to 100,000 GPUs on a single integrated network fabric, according to the companies.

Lancium has raised $150 million since its founding in 2017, according to Crunchbase. Investors include Hanwha Solutions and SBI Group.

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Texas could topple Virginia as biggest data-center market by 2030, JLL report says

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Everything’s bigger in Texas, they say—and that phrase now applies to the state’s growing data-center presence.

A new report from commercial real estate services provider JLL says Texas could overtake Northern Virginia as the world’s largest data-center market by 2030. Northern Virginia is a longtime holder of that title.

What’s driving Texas’ increasingly larger role in the data-center market? The key factor is artificial intelligence.

Companies like Google and Microsoft need more energy-hungry data centers to power AI innovations. In a 2023 article, Forbes explained that AI models consume a lot of energy because of the massive amount of data used to train them, as well as the complexity of those models and the rising volume of tasks assigned to AI.

“The data-center sector has officially entered hyperdrive,” Andy Cvengros, executive managing director at JLL and co-leader of its U.S. data-center business, said in the report. “Record-low vacancy sustained over two consecutive years provides compelling evidence against bubble concerns, especially when nearly all our massive construction pipeline is already pre-committed by investment-grade tenants.”

Dallas-Fort Worth has long dominated the Texas data-center market. But in recent years, West Texas has emerged as a popular territory for building data-center campuses, thanks in large part to an abundance of land and energy. Nearly two-thirds of data-center construction underway now is happening in “frontier markets” like West Texas, Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin, the JLL report says.

Northern Virginia, the current data-center champ in the U.S., boasted a data-center market with 6,315 megawatts of capacity at the end of 2025, the report says. That compares with 2,423 megawatts in Dallas-Fort Worth, 1,700 megawatts in the Austin-San Antonio corridor, 200 megawatts in West Texas, and 164 megawatts in Houston.

Fervo taps into its hottest-ever geothermal reservoir

heat record

Things are heating up at Houston-based geothermal power company Fervo Energy.

Fervo recently drilled its hottest well so far at a new geothermal site in western Utah. Fewer than 11 days of drilling more than 11,000 feet deep at Project Blanford showed temperatures above 555 degrees Fahrenheit, which exceeds requirements for commercial viability. Fervo used proprietary AI-driven analytics for the test.

Hotter geothermal reservoirs produce more energy and improve what’s known as energy conversion efficiency, which is the ratio of useful energy output to total energy input.

“Fervo’s exploration strategy has always been underpinned by the seamless integration of cutting-edge data acquisition and advanced analytics,” Jack Norbeck, Fervo’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said in a news release. “This latest ultra-high temperature discovery highlights our team’s ability to detect and develop EGS sweet spots using AI-enhanced geophysical techniques.”

Fervo says an independent review confirms the site’s multigigawatt potential.

The company has increasingly tapped into hotter and hotter geothermal reservoirs, going from 365 degrees at Project Red to 400 degrees at Cape Station and now more than 555 degrees at Blanford.

The new site expands Fervo’s geologic footprint. The Blanford reservoir consists of sedimentary formations such as sandstones, claystones and carbonates, which can be drilled more easily and cost-effectively than more commonly targeted granite formations.

Fervo ranks among the top-funded startups in the Houston area. Since its founding in 2017, the company has raised about $1.5 billion. In January, Fervo filed for an IPO that would value the company at $2 billion to $3 billion, according to Axios Pro.

Acquisitions and agreements fuel Houston energy news to know right now

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Editor's note: The top Houston energy news for the first half of February includes acquisitions, agreements, and must-attend events. Below are the five most-read EnergyCapitalHTX stories from Feb. 1-15, 2026:

Here are 5 must-attend Houston energy events for February 2026

Acquisitions and agreements fuel the top Houston energy news to knowCatch up on our top news for the first half of February. Courtesy photo

The second half of February is buzzing with must-attend events for those in the Houston energy sector. We've rounded up a host of events to put on your calendar for the month, with topics ranging from AI in energy to emissions management for a sustainable future. Continue reading.

ERCOT to capture big share of U.S. solar power growth through 2027

A new report predicts solar power supplied to the ERCOT grid will jump by 89 percent by the end of 2027. Photo by Red Zeppelin/Pexels

Much of the country’s growth in utility-scale solar power generation will happen in the grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), according to a new forecast. Continue reading.

Syzygy inks long-term offtake agreement for first commercial SAF plant

Syzygy Plasmonics has secured an offtake agreement for 100% of the production from its first commercial SAF plant. Photo courtesy of Syzygy.

Houston-based Syzygy Plasmonics has secured a six-year official offtake agreement for the entire production volume of its first commercial-scale biogas-to-sustainable aviation fuel project in Uruguay, known as NovaSAF-1. Continue reading.

Spring-based private equity firm acquires West Texas wind farm

Spring-based Arroyo Investors has purchased Whirlwind Energy Center in Amarillo, Texas. Photo by Sam LaRussa on Unsplash.

Spring-based private equity firm Arroyo Investors has teamed up with ONCEnergy, a Portland, Oregon-based developer of clean energy projects, to buy a 60-megawatt wind farm southeast of Amarillo. Continue reading.

$21.5 billion merger will create Houston-based energy powerhouse

Devon Energy will buy Houston-based Coterra Energy. Photo via Coterra Energy

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma-based Devon Energy has agreed to buy Houston-based Coterra Energy in a $21.5 billion all-stock deal, forming an energy powerhouse that will be headquartered in Houston. The combined company, boasting an enterprise value of $58 billion, will adopt the Devon brand name. Continue reading.

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