ERCOT's own 7-day hourly load forecast, plotted for the system and broken out by weather zone — updated as each new vintage is published, and one click from the live map.
ERCOT demand peaks at 90,596 MW on Mon 5 PM, against a low of 56,272 MW — a swing of 34,324 MW across the window. North Central (Dallas–Fort Worth) is the heaviest zone at 29,369 MW, 32% of the system peak.
Plotted window Aug 9, 11:00 PM CDT → Aug 17, 10:00 PM CDT. Republished by ERCOT on a rolling basis; the latest vintage for each hour is shown.
Every line above, and who produced it.
What settled — the realized values every forecast here is scored against.
The grid operator's own published forecast for these hours. Source: ERCOT.
Every settled hour scored against what each forecast said beforehand.
The window peaked at 83,118 MW on Mon 5 PM; ERCOT MTLF (day-ahead) called it 85,356 MW — 2,238 MW high.
The same week, split across ERCOT’s eight weather zones.
Every hour of the window, shaded by load.
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Darkest cells are the tightest hours. The week peaks at 90,596 MW on Mon 5 PM, and the daily band across the late afternoon and early evening is the solar ramp-down meeting air-conditioning load.
| Weather zone | Peak (MW) | Peak hour | Low (MW) | Average (MW) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NorthCentral | 29,369 | Mon 6 PM | 16,068 | 22,618 |
| Coast | 22,764 | Mon 5 PM | 13,910 | 18,314 |
| SouthCentral | 15,316 | Mon 7 PM | 8,525 | 12,023 |
| FarWest | 8,968 | Sun 2 PM | 7,633 | 8,102 |
| Southern | 6,749 | Mon 5 PM | 4,208 | 5,532 |
| East | 3,186 | Sun 6 PM | 1,779 | 2,463 |
| North | 2,860 | Sun 6 PM | 1,790 | 2,311 |
| West | 2,681 | Tue 6 PM | 1,524 | 2,114 |
| Forecast | Avg miss (MW) | Avg miss % | Bias | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ERCOT MTLF (day-ahead) | 1,023 | 1.3% | +760 | 24 |
Each forecast as it stood 24 hours before the hour it predicted, against what settled. Smaller is better on every column. Bias is signed: positive means the forecast ran high.
| Forecast | Produced by | Method | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forecast demand | ERCOT | Mid-Term Load Forecast (MTLF), report NP3-565-CD | 7 days ahead, hourly |
ERCOT publishes the MTLF as a single point forecast with no confidence interval. Actual demand routinely differs from it, most on days with unusual weather.
The mid-term load forecast (MTLF) is ERCOT's hour-by-hour projection of total electricity demand across the Texas Interconnection for the next seven days. This page plots the most recent vintage for the system as a whole, then breaks the same forecast out across the eight ERCOT weather zones so you can see where the demand is actually expected.
Load is the single biggest driver of price in ERCOT. The forecast peak is what generators bid against, what determines whether reserves get tight, and what sets up the scarcity intervals that produce four-figure prices. A forecast peak arriving in the same hours as the solar ramp-down is the setup behind most ERCOT price spikes.
Look for the highest point of each day, and the hour it lands in. Summer peaks in ERCOT typically fall between 16:00 and 20:00 local time — the window where air-conditioning load is still high but solar output is falling away. The gap between the daily peak and the overnight minimum is the ramp the fleet has to deliver.
ERCOT republishes the mid-term load forecast on a rolling basis, and Ask the Grid keeps every vintage rather than overwriting. This page always plots the most recent forecast issued for each hour, so the curve reflects the latest information ERCOT has — not a snapshot taken whenever the page was last edited.
curl "https://askthegrid.com/api/v1/grid/series?iso=ERCOT&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 ERCOT's hourly projection of total electricity demand on the Texas grid for the next seven days, published as the Mid-Term Load Forecast (MTLF). ERCOT produces it from weather forecasts for each of its eight weather zones plus historical demand behaviour, and uses it to plan generation commitments.
Day-ahead accuracy is generally good — errors of a few percent are typical — and it degrades as the horizon lengthens. The largest misses cluster on days with unusual weather, especially early-season heat, late-season cold, and fast-moving fronts, because the forecast inherits the uncertainty of the weather forecast underneath it.
MTLF stands for Mid-Term Load Forecast: ERCOT's hourly demand forecast covering the next 168 hours, by weather zone and for the system total. It sits between the short-term forecast used for real-time operations and the long-term forecast used for planning.
In summer, ERCOT demand typically peaks in the late afternoon and early evening, between roughly 16:00 and 20:00 Central. Winter peaks behave differently — they are usually early morning, around 07:00, driven by electric heating. The chart above shows exactly which hour the current forecast peaks in.
No. This page shows forecast demand in megawatts, not price. Load is the largest single driver of ERCOT prices, but the relationship is not fixed — it depends on which generation is available, what the wind and solar fleets are doing, and whether transmission constraints bind.
Directly from ERCOT's published MTLF feed (NP3-565-CD). Ask the Grid ingests every forecast vintage as it is published and stores it bitemporally, so the page can show the most recent forecast for each hour rather than a stale snapshot.