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CAISO load forecast
CAISO's published seven-day demand forecast, plotted against realized load and split across the utility transmission areas — updated as each new vintage lands.
Fetching the latest published forecast…
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CAISO's published seven-day demand forecast, plotted against realized load and split across the utility transmission areas — updated as each new vintage lands.
How much power will California need?
CAISO demand peaks at 31,608 MW on Sat, 6 PM, against a low of 18,771 MW — a swing of 12,836 MW across the window. SCE (the Los Angeles Basin and Inland Empire) is the heaviest area at 14,583 MW, 46% of the system peak.
Every line above, and who produced it.
Observed or settled values for the plotted intervals. Source: CAISO.
A published forecast for the plotted target intervals. Source: CAISO.
The same window, split by utility area — each area’s own curve.
Every hour of the window, shaded by load.
| 0 | 6 | 12 | 18 | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun, 10/11 |
| Utility area | Peak (MW) | Peak hour | Low (MW) | Average (MW) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SCE-TAC | 14,583 | Sat, 5 PM | 9,074 | 11,165 |
| PGE-TAC | 13,609 | Mon, 6 PM | 7,259 | 10,372 |
| SDGE-TAC | 3,621 | Sat, 6 PM | 1,625 | 2,464 |
| MWD-TAC | 184 | Wed, 3 PM | 176 | 178 |
| VEA-TAC | 69 | Sat, 4 PM | 42 | 53 |
| Forecast | Avg miss (MW) | Avg miss % | Bias | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAISO demand forecast (day-ahead) | 1,173 | 5.3% | +940 | 24 |
Each forecast frozen as it stood 24 hours ago, then scored against every hour that has settled since. Smaller is better on every column. Bias is signed: positive means the forecast ran high.
| Series | Produced by | Method | Horizon | Issued |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forecast demand | CAISO | CAISO demand forecast (OASIS SLD_FCST), by TAC area | 7 days ahead, hourly | Issue time not exposed by this feed |
CAISO publishes a point forecast with no confidence interval. Errors concentrate on unusual-weather days — early heat, marine-layer surprises on the coast — because the forecast inherits the weather forecast underneath it.
CAISO publishes several demand forecasts side by side for its footprint — most of California and a corner of Nevada — reaching from the current five-minute interval out to seven days. This page plots the seven-day run, which is the one that answers a question about the week, against what actually settled, net of battery charging: CAISO's settled load counts storage charging as demand and its forecasts do not. The same forecast is then split across the transmission access charge areas: PG&E in the north, Southern California Edison in the LA Basin, SDG&E in San Diego, plus the two small municipal areas.
California's gross demand curve is unremarkable; what matters is that solar serves a huge share of the middle of the day. As the sun sets, the rest of the fleet must ramp up at the fastest sustained rate on any US grid — the famous duck curve. The evening hours where the forecast peaks are the hours batteries discharge and prices set.
CAISO reissues the forecast continuously and Ask the Grid keeps every vintage rather than overwriting, so the curve reflects the latest information CAISO has published for each interval — not a snapshot from whenever the page was last edited.
curl "https://askthegrid.com/api/v1/grid/series?iso=CAISO&metric=load_forecast&zone=SYSTEM&hours=168"
Connect your agent to mcp.askthegrid.com and this forecast is a tool call away — the same host Claude and ChatGPT connectors already use.
It is CAISO's own projection of electricity demand across its footprint, published at five-minute resolution up to a week ahead. CAISO uses it to schedule the fleet; this page plots it against what actually settled so its accuracy is visible rather than assumed.
Because solar suppresses net demand through the middle of the day. Gross demand peaks in the late afternoon with air conditioning, but the hours that stress the grid come after sunset, when solar output falls away faster than demand does — the evening ramp the duck curve describes.
CAISO settles transmission charges by TAC area, which follow the big utility service territories: PG&E across Northern and Central California, Southern California Edison in the LA Basin and Inland Empire, SDG&E in San Diego, plus the small MWD and Valley Electric areas. The breakdown shows where the demand actually sits.
Plotted window Oct 11, 2:00 AM PDT → Oct 18, 11:00 PM PDT. Reissued on a rolling basis; the latest vintage for each interval is shown.
| Mon, 10/12 |
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| Tue, 10/13 |
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| Wed, 10/14 |
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| Thu, 10/15 |
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| Fri, 10/16 |
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| Sat, 10/17 |
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| Sun, 10/18 |
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Darkest cells are the tightest hours. The window peaks at 31,608 MW on Sat, 6 PM, local to the market.