What this list actually is
Before the table, a quick definition so we’re all on the same page.
ERCOT — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas — runs the grid for about 90% of the state. Before any new power plant, solar farm, or battery storage facility can plug into that grid, the developer has to file an interconnection request with ERCOT. That request gets a queue ID (the INR numbers you’ll see below), goes through studies, gets a signed interconnection agreement, and eventually — if everything pencils out — the project gets built and energized.
The list below is every project currently in the Active state of the ERCOT interconnection queue with a point of interconnection located in Leon County. “Active” means it’s a real, formally-filed project moving through ERCOT’s process. Not built yet. Not operational yet. But not withdrawn, not suspended, and not a rumor.
Data is pulled from interconnection.fyi, which mirrors ERCOT’s public queue data and updates daily.
The current pipeline for Leon County
| Project Name | Queue ID | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Pecan Prairie South | 21INR0371 | Active |
| Pecan Prairie North | 21INR0428 | Active |
| Hollow Branch Creek Solar | 24INR0422 | Active |
| Great Rock BESS | 25INR0230 | Active |
| Nickel Spruce Solar | 25INR0342 | Active |
| Kahla Storage | 25INR0513 | Active |
| Leon BESS | 25INR0693 | Active |
| Leon Solar Park | 26INR0023 | Active |
| Dempsey Solar SLF | 26INR0632 | Active |
| Pecan BESS | 27INR0092 | Active |
| Dempsey Storage SLF | 28INR0238 | Active |
| BM Great Rock Energy Center | 30INR0091 | Active |
Twelve active projects. Zero operational. One suspended. Four already withdrawn.
Read that count again. Twelve. In a county of roughly 16,000 people.
What you’re looking at
Look at the project names. Half of them are battery energy storage systems — “BESS,” “Storage,” “Energy Center.” The other half are solar farms, several of which are paired with co-located battery storage on the same site.
Battery storage and solar are not the same risk profile as a wind farm or a gas peaker. Lithium-ion battery installations have a very specific failure mode that the fire service has been learning about the hard way over the last few years: thermal runaway. When a single cell goes into thermal runaway, it cascades. The fire is self-sustaining, it produces toxic gases (hydrogen fluoride being the headline one), it can reignite hours or days after it appears to be out, and you cannot extinguish it with water in the conventional sense — you cool the surrounding cells and you wait.
This is not a hypothetical. Moss Landing in California burned in January 2025 and again later that year. Valley Center, Otay Mesa, Surprise (Arizona), Chaparral (New Mexico) — the list of major BESS fires in the U.S. keeps growing. Each one teaches the same lesson: you need a plan before the facility is built, not after it’s on fire.
Where the county fire marshal comes in
Texas Local Government Code Chapter 352 gives commissioners courts the authority to appoint a county fire marshal. Among other duties, a fire marshal investigates fire causes, enforces fire safety standards, and — critically for what’s coming to Leon County — reviews plans and conducts inspections for facilities that present unusual fire hazards.
Leon County does not have one.
Right now, when one of these twelve facilities files for a building permit, gets graded, gets built, and gets energized, there is no county-level fire safety professional reviewing the site plan. No one is asking the developer:
- Where’s the emergency vehicle access for a 100-acre solar farm with a 200 MWh battery yard in the middle of it?
- What’s the water supply plan? (Hint: there often isn’t one — battery fires don’t use water that way.)
- What’s the off-gas detection plan? The deflagration vent design? The thermal runaway propagation analysis?
- Who is the named local emergency point of contact and what’s the mutual aid pre-plan with the volunteer fire departments and the ESDs?
- What hazmat training and equipment do the responding VFDs need, and who is paying for it?
These aren’t gotcha questions. These are the standard questions the National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 855 standard expects a local authority having jurisdiction to ask. In Leon County, there is no one with the title, the training, or the statutory authority to ask them.
The math the commissioners need to do
Commissioner Workman has publicly acknowledged that these facilities require expertise the county does not currently have on staff. That’s the right read of the situation. The next step is the part where the court actually appoints the expert.
The case writes itself:
- Twelve active projects in the ERCOT queue right now.
- A majority involve lithium-ion battery storage, which has a fire failure mode that volunteer fire departments are not, on their own, equipped to plan for.
- Zero operational today — meaning we are still in the window where plan review actually matters. Once these things are energized, the leverage is gone.
- The position is explicitly authorized under LGC Chapter 352. This is not a new program that requires enabling legislation. The legal authority already exists.
- The funding model is straightforward — fire marshal operations are routinely funded through county general fund, ESD coordination, and in some counties through permit fees on the very facilities being reviewed. The developers building these projects have nine and ten-figure capital stacks. A fire safety review fee is a rounding error to them.
So how many more before we get serious?
The honest question isn’t whether Leon County will eventually need a fire marshal. With twelve active interconnection requests and more filing every quarter, that ship has sailed. The question is whether we hire one before the first BESS fire, or after.
Every county that has lived through a major battery fire has the same after-action report. It always reads the same way: we wish we’d had someone on staff reviewing this before it was built.
We have that window right now. The first of these projects isn’t energized yet. The plan review opportunity for the rest of them is still open.
We have twelve good reasons sitting in the queue and a clear path under Chapter 352. The next ESD3 meeting and the next commissioners court meeting are both opportunities to ask the simple question:
What number gets us to “yes”?
Data source and methodology
The project list above was pulled on May 11, 2026 from interconnection.fyi’s Leon County, Texas page, which aggregates the public ERCOT generation interconnection queue and updates daily. “Active” reflects ERCOT’s project status — meaning the interconnection request is currently being studied or has a signed interconnection agreement and is moving toward construction. It excludes projects with Operational, Suspended, or Withdrawn status.
For context, Leon County also has on record:
- 1 Suspended project: HIP ESS Project (21INR0390)
- 4 Withdrawn projects: Lazy J Solar, Hollow Branch Creek Solar SLF, Hollow Branch Creek Storage, Normangee Solar
A “Withdrawn” project can be refiled at any time — and frequently is, under a slightly different name. The Hollow Branch Creek entries are a good example: the project originally filed under one queue ID, withdrew, and refiled.
If you want to follow the queue yourself, bookmark this link: https://www.interconnection.fyi/projects/state/TX/leon-county