ERCOT Day-Ahead Prices

ERCOT day-ahead locational marginal prices, one row per interval and location.

Prices data ERCOT market

Query with the agent

Native record

location x kind x delivery hour

hourly (DAM) publication cadence

Evidence

Cleared day-ahead market

A market outcome, not a physical observation

Time basis

Interval-start records

UTC · event_time

Overview

66.7M rows, 2017-01 to the next delivery day. Carries price_usd_mwh plus energy_usd_mwh and congestion_usd_mwh, with energy taken from ERCOT's DAM system lambda. No loss component: ERCOT does not publish one. Locations are node, zone, hub, interface; location_id joins atg.ercot_locations for the readable name, and kind is carried inline so a hub-only or zone-only question needs no join at all. Every market's day-ahead price table in this catalog has these same column names, so a cross-market price comparison is a UNION rather than a per-ISO rewrite. Revisions are already collapsed — read it plainly.

Query contract

One row is already the canonical price for (event_time, location_id, kind) — the refresh collapsed the source's revisions. Select the interval and the locations you need; do not de-duplicate again. Day-ahead rows for the next delivery day are published in a single late-evening batch, so max(event_time) runs ahead of the wall clock by design.

Analysis rules

Prices are intensive. Averaging across intervals gives a simple (unweighted) average price, which is not a settlement or load-weighted price; say which one you computed. Never sum prices across intervals or locations.
Do not add price_usd_mwh to its own components — they decompose it, they do not extend it.

Related analysis

resolving a location's readable name and type · join on location_id, and on kind where both carry it
day-ahead versus real-time basis at one location · aggregate the real-time intervals in the delivery hour before comparing

Interpretation

ERCOT clears its day-ahead market around midday and posts the results by about 1:30 PM Central the day before delivery. Before early afternoon Central time, the next day's prices have not been published yet — that is the market's schedule, not missing coverage.
A price difference between two locations is a basis. It is evidence that they separated, not evidence of which facility bound; that needs the congestion component or the constraints table.

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_prices_da/query

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

Schema6

Column

Type

event_timeDateTime64(6, 'UTC')

location_idString

kindLowCardinality(String)

price_usd_mwhNullable(Float64)

energy_usd_mwhNullable(Float64)

congestion_usd_mwhNullable(Float64)

Sample data

event_time	location_id	kind	price_usd_mwh	energy_usd_mwh	congestion_usd_mwh
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AMOCO_PUN2	node	36.18	29.6456	6.534399999999998
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AGUAYO_UNIT1	node	13.2	29.6456	-16.445600000000002
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AMADEUS_ALL	node	15.5	29.6456	-14.145600000000002
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AMOCOOIL_CC2	node	36.18	29.6456	6.534399999999998
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	ABINDUST_RN	node	24.23	29.6456	-5.415600000000001
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AMOCOOIL_CC1	node	36.18	29.6456	6.534399999999998
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	7RNCHSLR_ALL	node	36.88	29.6456	7.234400000000001
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AE_RN	node	36.14	29.6456	6.494399999999999
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	ADL_RN	node	35.77	29.6456	6.124400000000001
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AMISTAD_ALL	node	32.88	29.6456	3.234400000000001
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AEEC	node	20.77	29.6456	-8.875600000000002
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AMAD_ESS_RN	node	32.24	29.6456	2.5944000000000003
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AMO_AMOCO_S1	node	36.18	29.6456	6.534399999999998
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AMO_AMOCO_S2	node	36.18	29.6456	6.534399999999998
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AZ_ALL	node	37.34	29.6456	7.694400000000002
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	ANEM_ESS_RN	node	35.7	29.6456	6.054400000000001
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	BAC_RN_ALL	node	36.09	29.6456	6.444400000000002
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	ARMD_SLR_RN	node	32.58	29.6456	2.9343999999999966
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	ASCK_SLR_RN	node	-8.2	29.6456	-37.845600000000005
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	ANTL_ESS_ES1	node	24.62	29.6456	-5.025600000000001
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	AQUI_ALL	node	-8.2	29.6456	-37.845600000000005
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	APCH_BES_RN	node	30	29.6456	0.35439999999999827
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	BASTEN_CC1	node	36.48	29.6456	6.834399999999995
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	BAKE_RN_ALL	node	30.3	29.6456	0.654399999999999
2026-10-13 05:00:00.000000	BARROW_ALL	node	25.47	29.6456	-4.175600000000003

Coverage

100.0% complete0 gap days4,548 days with data

Show coverage history

Coverage: 100.0%Days with data: 4,548Gaps: 0

2026

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gaplessmore

Related prices data

Related prices data
Dataset	Description
DAM Settlement Point PricesERCOT · hourly (DAM)	Hourly settlement point prices cleared in the ERCOT Day-Ahead Market, covering every settlement point in Texas (load zones, hubs, and resource nodes). These are the prices at which energy is bought and sold a day in advance of delivery, set the afternoon before each operating day. They are the day-ahead counterpart to real-time locational prices, and the gap between the two reflects how the market expected conditions to differ from how they actually unfolded. Traders use them to position and hedge, generators and loads use them to plan commitments, and researchers use them to study how congestion and scarcity show up across the grid.
DAM System LambdaERCOT · hourly (DAM)	ERCOT's hourly day-ahead system lambda, the system-wide marginal energy component in the cleared Day-Ahead Market. For the same delivery hour and settlement point, day-ahead SPP minus DAM system lambda is the point's cleared day-ahead congestion component. Paired with SCED system lambda and real-time LMP, it supports day-ahead-versus-real-time congestion basis by point. It does not identify a binding constraint's effect on a point without direct attribution evidence.
DAM Total Energy SoldERCOT · hourly (DAM)	This dataset reports the total energy sold in ERCOT's Day-Ahead Market, in megawatt-hours, for each delivery hour. It represents the system-wide quantity of energy that cleared the day-ahead auction, where buyers and sellers commit to next-day positions before real-time operations. The hourly shape across a day shows how much of expected Texas demand is locked in financially a day ahead, and tracking it over time reveals shifts in day-ahead market participation and how forward commitments line up against eventual real-time conditions. The figures come from ERCOT report NP4-193-CD.
ERCOT Real-Time PricesERCOT · 5-minute (SCED)	ERCOT real-time locational marginal prices, one row per interval and location. 979.1M rows, 2014-05 to now. Carries price_usd_mwh plus energy_usd_mwh and congestion_usd_mwh. ERCOT publishes no marginal-loss component and this table has no loss column: energy is ERCOT's own SCED system lambda and congestion is price minus lambda, an exact identity rather than an estimate. Locations are node (resource nodes), zone (load zones), hub, interface (the four DC ties); location_id joins atg.ercot_locations for the readable name, and kind is carried inline so a hub-only or zone-only question needs no join at all. Every market's real-time price table in this catalog has these same column names, so a cross-market price comparison is a UNION rather than a per-ISO rewrite. Revisions are already collapsed — read it plainly.