ERCOT Outage Capacity

How much ERCOT generation capacity is expected to be unavailable, one row per target hour and region.

Outages & Grid Events data ERCOT market

Query with the agent

Native record

region x target hour, latest published vintage

hourly (forward-looking, reissued hourly) publication cadence

Evidence

Forecast data

Forward-looking values with an explicit issue time

Time basis

Interval-start records

UTC · event_time

Overview

268,745 rows, 2017-01 out to roughly eight days ahead. Regions are system, north, south, west and houston. ERCOT publishes this as a rolling forward view with an hourly vintage for every target hour — 15.17M raw rows across 83,875 vintages. This table collapses that to the latest published view of each target hour, which is what almost every question about expected outages actually wants, and removes the vintage-selection step where those questions usually go wrong. ERCOT reported this system-wide until 2021 and regionally afterwards; system rows are ERCOT's own total where it published one and the sum of the four regions after. No hour carries both. The forced-versus-planned split and the separate IRR and new-equipment categories are NOT here — they remain in ercot.hourly_resource_outage_capacity and ercot.reported_outages.

Query contract

One row is the latest view ERCOT published of that target hour for that region. The vintage collapse has already happened; do not select a publication time, because there is no publication column here.

Analysis rules

region='system' is the ERCOT-wide value. Do not add it to the four regional rows — that double-counts the market.
The four regional rows sum to the system value only for hours after ERCOT moved to regional reporting in 2021. Before that only system rows exist.

Interpretation

THIS IS A FORECAST, including for hours that have already passed — it is the last thing ERCOT expected, not what was measured. Do not describe it as observed outages.
Rows exist for hours up to about eight days ahead. Check whether event_time is in the future before calling a value current.

Access

Query from your own tools

Use the guarded HTTP endpoint directly, or connect an MCP client and load the dataset contract with describe_data before calling query_data.

ERCOT MCP API reference

HTTP endpoint

POST /api/v1/datasets/ercot_outage_capacity/query

Need the full history of this dataset in Snowflake, Databricks or your own storage? Data services delivers it on a schedule.

Schema3

Column

Type

event_timeDateTime64(6, 'UTC')

regionLowCardinality(String)

outage_mwNullable(Float64)

Sample data

event_time	region	outage_mw
2026-10-20 04:00:00.000000	system	21121
2026-10-20 04:00:00.000000	houston	5043
2026-10-20 04:00:00.000000	north	7310
2026-10-20 04:00:00.000000	south	7199
2026-10-20 04:00:00.000000	west	1569
2026-10-20 03:00:00.000000	west	1569
2026-10-20 03:00:00.000000	system	21121
2026-10-20 03:00:00.000000	south	7199
2026-10-20 03:00:00.000000	houston	5043
2026-10-20 03:00:00.000000	north	7310
2026-10-20 02:00:00.000000	system	21121
2026-10-20 02:00:00.000000	houston	5043
2026-10-20 02:00:00.000000	south	7199
2026-10-20 02:00:00.000000	west	1569
2026-10-20 02:00:00.000000	north	7310
2026-10-20 01:00:00.000000	system	21121
2026-10-20 01:00:00.000000	south	7199
2026-10-20 01:00:00.000000	west	1569
2026-10-20 01:00:00.000000	houston	5043
2026-10-20 01:00:00.000000	north	7310
2026-10-20 00:00:00.000000	houston	5043
2026-10-20 00:00:00.000000	south	7199
2026-10-20 00:00:00.000000	west	1569
2026-10-20 00:00:00.000000	system	21121
2026-10-20 00:00:00.000000	north	7310

Coverage

100.0% complete0 gap days3,580 days with data

Show coverage history

Coverage: 100.0%Days with data: 3,580Gaps: 0

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

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Related outages & grid events data

Related outages & grid events data
Dataset	Description
Hourly Resource Outage CapacityERCOT · hourly (168-hour forecast vintages)	ERCOT's Hourly Resource Outage Capacity report — the amount of generation capacity out of service across the Texas grid, projected hour by hour over a rolling seven-day horizon. Each posting from the Outage Scheduler breaks the outaged megawatts out by weather zone (South, North, West, Houston) and by category: Total Resource (a proxy for thermal outages), Total IRR (intermittent wind and solar), and Total New Equipment Resource (units still in commissioning). It is bitemporal — every row carries both the projected delivery hour (event_time) and the publishing vintage (source_time), and because ERCOT revises the projection every hour, successive vintages accumulate as distinct rows rather than overwriting. This is the core dataset for seeing how much capacity is unavailable at any moment, how outage expectations shift as an operating hour approaches, and how planned and forced outages concentrate by region — a direct input to scarcity, reserve adequacy, and reliability-unit-commitment analysis. The official source is ERCOT report NP3-233-CD, Hourly Resource Outage Capacity.
Planned Resource Outage Capacity LimitsERCOT · twice each business day (daily target vintages)	ERCOT's operating-day Resource Planned Outage Limit (RPOL) and the aggregate planned-outage megawatts already approved or received for that day. The report separates non-IRR/non-PUN generation, Energy Storage Resources (ESR), and Intermittent Renewable Resources (IRR), and publishes successive vintages from seven days through 60 months ahead. It is grid-level scheduling evidence: it does not identify the resources behind the approved or received totals. The official source is NP3-161-CD, Available Resource Planned Outage Capacity Margin 7 Day Plus.
Reported Generation OutagesERCOT · 5-minute	The ERCOT Generation Outages dashboard feed, recorded as system snapshots. It reports total, planned, and forced or unplanned generation-capability reductions, with dispatchable and renewable breakdowns. These are aggregate MW values submitted by Market Participants and can include full outages and partial reductions; they are not per-resource outage identities. The dashboard covers the current day and previous six days.
Unplanned Resource OutagesERCOT · hourly (revised as episodes update)	Named, unit-level forced outages and derates in ERCOT, updated live rather than on a disclosure delay. Each row is one reported outage episode for one resource, with the resource name and fuel type, the outage type, the start and end of the episode, how much capacity was lost (mw_reduction), what remained available, the unit's high sustainable limit, and the reported nature of the work. Because it names the generator and is current, this is the dataset that answers what CHANGED on the supply side: which generating units tripped, failed, went offline or were derated before a price spike, how much generation capacity was lost or unavailable during a scarcity hour, and whether a congestion pattern coincides with a specific unit being out of service. A forced outage, a trip, a derate and an unplanned unit failure are all this table. It complements the aggregate outage-capacity reports, which give system totals without saying which units they are. Note that ERCOT revises these records as episodes are updated, so the same outage can appear with a changing end time; source_time is the report vintage. Measured 2026-09-07: 675 thousand rows from 31 December 2021 to the present. The official source is ERCOT report NP1-346-ER, Unplanned Resource Outages.