The Energy Forge One Signal Was Real — and Bigger Than the ERCOT Queue Suggested

In Issue #001 we underwrote Energy Forge One LLC and put a label on its offtake that we do not use loosely: Rumored. The Microsoft power deal was consistent with the reporting, but it was not yet a public record, so we did not score it as one.

On June 22, Chevron signed it. Chevron and Microsoft announced a 20-year power agreement for a West Texas data center, and Energy Forge One is the Chevron subsidiary carrying the project. The offtake we flagged as rumored is now a signed contract.

The signal held. That is worth noting — but it is not the point of this issue. The more useful part is what the interconnection queue line never told you.

Energy Forge One came into Issue #001 with a Runtime TRS of 81, a Framework TRS of 83, and a Distance to Bankability of 2.6 — a high-band signal, underwritten from public records. We named the probable sponsor as Chevron with Engine No. 1, and the probable offtaker as Microsoft, and we labeled both Probable, not confirmed. The construction stack was already credible: Bechtel on EPC, GE Vernova on turbines, the interconnection past Facilities Study into Agreement, the TCEQ air permit filed.

What we did not have was a signed contract. So we said so.

The contract now exists. Chevron's June 22 announcement puts hard terms around what had been trade reporting: a 20-year agreement with Microsoft, the plant named Project Kilby, sited in Reeves County near Pecos, developed through Energy Forge One with Engine No. 1 as investment partner. Initial power is targeted for 2028, fueled by Permian gas, with GE Vernova turbines supplemented by Caterpillar's Solar Turbines. Chevron frames the development as potentially generating more than $10 billion in state and local tax revenue.

A rumored offtake and a signed 20-year contract are not the same asset. The second one is bankable.

Here is the part the market is only now seeing. In the ERCOT interconnection queue, Energy Forge One reads as roughly 1,056 MW. The signed project is about 2.67 GW — Chevron's announced figure — with permit and related filings describing a phased build that reaches roughly 2,869 MW. For this brief we treat 2.67 GW as the confirmed headline and ~2.869 GW as filing-range upside.

The gap is not an error. It is structure. Kilby is being built as off-grid, behind-the-meter capacity — dedicated dispatchable power delivered straight to Microsoft's data center, explicitly designed to minimize its draw on the regional grid. A queue line sized for grid interconnection was always going to understate a plant whose main job is to sit behind the meter and run a compute campus.

That is the real signal in this follow-up: dedicated off-grid gas for AI load is its own project category, and reading it off grid-interconnection data alone will consistently undercount it.

None of the confirmed facts required an anonymous source. The shape of this project was legible months early from public filings that most investors never assemble in one place — a Texas Comptroller JETI application, a TCEQ air-permit trail and public-meeting notice, county tax-abatement records, and OEM and EPC breadcrumbs, cross-read against the queue. The public record led the official headline. Our job was to synthesize it before the headline existed, and to state the confidence we had at each step.

That is the whole discipline: public facts first, methodology visible, confidence labeled, and the money implication stated plainly.

Whether the TCEQ air permit moves from filed to approved. Whether the phased buildout and turbine deliveries become visible before the next round of corporate announcements. Whether the projected 2028 initial-power date holds. And whether more AI loads adopt the same off-grid, behind-the-meter structure — because if they do, the interconnection queue will keep understating the real build, and the edge will belong to whoever reads the rest of the record.

We were early, not loud. The takeaway is not that we were right about one project. It is that the project turned out to be bigger, more off-grid, and more AI-specific than the queue alone suggested — and the public record said so first.

— Grid Alpha Intelligence

Grid Alpha Intelligence is an independent intelligence publication focused on pre-tokenization energy infrastructure. All content is informational only — not investment advice.