NRG opens first new power plant in a decade in northwest Harris County

A new 456-megawatt natural-gas plant in northwest Houston is now online, giving Harris County another fast-ramping source of power as extreme heat pushes ERCOT toward higher summer peaks. The TH Wharton expansion at 16301 Highway 249 is designed to start generating in about 30 minutes and run only one to two hours a day on average, a sign it is meant to steady the grid during spikes, not operate as a full-time baseload plant.

Gov. Greg Abbott said the units came online June 10. The project adds two gas-fired units at NRG Energy’s existing TH Wharton Generating Station and is expected to support the constrained Houston load zone in summer 2026. NRG said the facility can power more than 100,000 Texas homes during periods of peak demand. Because the plant sits inside an existing generating station, it avoided some of the hurdles that can slow a new build on undeveloped land.

The expansion was financed in part by a Texas Energy Fund loan of up to $216 million, equal to 60% of the estimated project cost of under $360 million. The state-backed loan runs 20 years at 3% interest, from July 31, 2025, through July 30, 2045. The Texas Energy Fund was created by Senate Bill 2627 and approved by voters on November 7, 2023. Since its launch, the Public Utility Commission of Texas says the fund has allocated $3.06 billion in loans to support 4,134 megawatts of new, reliable generation for the ERCOT grid.

For northwest Harris County, the opening carries more than a utility headline. The plant adds a major industrial asset in the Cypress-Fairbanks ISD area and deepens the corridor along Highway 249, where power infrastructure, property values and future development often move together. In a region where electricity demand keeps climbing with population growth, industrial expansion and new data centers, that kind of investment can shape where growth goes next.

NRG said the project is its first new power plant in more than a decade, a milestone for a Houston company that has long been tied to the region’s energy economy. With ERCOT’s summer 2026 outlook projecting peak demand above 92.2 gigawatts, the new units give operators another dispatchable resource they can call on quickly when the margin gets tight.