🇺🇸Bob Howard⚓️🇺🇸

ERCOT UPDATE 1/04/2026 $IREN holders 🧵 ERCOT's new Batch Study process (PGRR 145). Every project gets sorted into one of three buckets: ✅ Base load → locked in, NO restudy, protected ⚠️ Study case → 6-month restudy, approval decision Aug 7 ❌ Deferred → study doesn't even start until Feb 2027 Of ~50 GW in the queue: • 11.7 GW → Base load • 28.4 GW → Study case • 17.6 GW → Deferred $IREN: Sweetwater 1 clears as BASE LOAD ✅ 1,333 MW. Equipment procured, construction underway. This means: • Protected from cascade restudy for the first time • No re-study risk • No August 7 exposure • Locked in ahead of 28 GW still in study Sweetwater 2 enters study case — delay risk, but not fatal to the core thesis. WINNERS ✅ (Base load — locked in, no restudy) $IREN — Sweetwater 1 (1,333 MW) ⭐ $CIFR — Black Pearl/Barber Lake (407 MW) $CORZ — (222 MW) $AMZN AWS Grand Prairie (1,200 MW) SoftBank Rosebud (1,250 MW, OpenAI tenant) Crusoe Abilene (618 MW) Common thread: construction underway, equipment on-site, studies completed. LOSERS ❌ (Study case or deferred — delay risk) Galaxy Digital $GLXY Afton expansion (943 MW) → Public announcement but may lack physical progress attestations required under PGRR 145. Binary outcome on Aug 7. $AMZN AWS Granbury (1,200 MW) → ERCOT quietly changed pathway (e) from "or" to "and" — now needs BOTH valid studies AND executed interconnection agreement. IA-only route is closed. Lancium Turkey/Childress (5,021 MW) → Not in Batch Zero. No construction, no tenant, no onsite power. $251M deposit with no disclosed revenue. THE HIDDEN RISK: AEP Texas North territory This is where the real damage is: • ~26 GW locked out of the RPG path entirely • ~15 GW hasn't even submitted interconnection studies • LLIS processing speed: 337 MW/month • At that pace: 44 months to clear → well into 2029 IREN's Sweetwater sits in AEP-N but cleared via individual LLIS — that distinction matters enormously. Why this matters structurally for $IREN The queue behind Sweetwater is effectively frozen. 15 GW in AEP territory with no studies submitted won't be studied until Batch 1 at the earliest. IREN didn't just clear. It cleared ahead of a frozen queue in its own backyard. That's a competitive moat on power access, not just a regulatory checkbox. Bottom line: Batch Study replaces a moratorium with a real process. Hard deadlines, financial commitment gates ($50k/MW to stay in queue), and a mechanism to kill speculative load. Winners = under construction + studies done Losers = announcements without shovels in the ground $IREN is exactly where you want to be.