What came out of a Texas Senate hearing in Austin regarding the state's power provider caught the attention of University of Houston Energy and Innovation VP Ramanan Krishnamoorti.
"That's exactly what we've been predicting," Krishnamoorti said. "It could double. In the next ten years, it could as much as quadruple."
Krishnamoorti believes the state's power demand is about to rapidly grow. On Wednesday, lawmakers heard from ERCOT and other power officials about this.
They said the growth of data centers is contributing to the demand, but that's not the only factor.
"We continue to see small businesses and citizens moving to the state," Public Utilities Commission chairman Thomas Gleason said. "We have to find a way to efficiently and efficiently move the generation, wherever it's being built."
Right now, they say the majority of power generation is coming from renewables, such as wind and solar. Sources that create a lot of power during the day.
However, with more data centers needing power at night, officials say they need other sources such as gas.
"The mix that we're seeing today is well over 90 percent made up of renewables and battery storage," ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas explained. "If that continues while load grows very rapidly, we're going to get to a place where we have a lot more scarcity events."
Take last week, for example. The state hit a record high for demand. Yet, there weren't any conservation calls or outages. Energy experts believe that could change in a few years because of the growing demand.
"We should all be worried because one thing we will all see, like it or not, is that there are likely to be places and times when there will be congestion on the grid, and there will be a challenge to get us the electrons that we need," Krishnamoorti explained.
To prevent this, officials say they need to create more supply. Energy experts say that likely means you could be paying more for your power.
"When you start to double, or triple the amount of demand, we're going to have to increase the amount of grid capacity," Krishnamoorti said. "Yes, we can put some of it on datacenters. We can put some of it on large loads, but the consumer is going to have to bear some of that cost."
Which is why they say what came out of Austin shouldn't just catch their attention, but yours as well.