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ERCOT net load forecast
ERCOT's own demand, wind, and solar forecasts, combined into the number generators actually plan against — with every input shown alongside it.
Fetching the latest published forecast…
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ERCOT's own demand, wind, and solar forecasts, combined into the number generators actually plan against — with every input shown alongside it.
What will Texas's thermal fleet actually have to serve?
ERCOT net load peaks at 72,804 MW on Thu, 9 PM, against a low of 36,629 MW — a swing of 36,175 MW across the window. Net load is the heaviest area at 72,804 MW.
Every line above, and who produced it.
The grid operator's own published forecast for these hours. Source: ERCOT (composed by Ask the Grid).
What settled — the realized values every forecast here is scored against.
Generating capacity expected to be available to serve demand.
Each day of the window on its own.
Every hour of the window, shaded by load.
| 0 | 6 | 12 | 18 | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu, 8/27 |
| Series | Peak (MW) | Peak hour | Low (MW) | Average (MW) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net load | 72,804 | Thu, 9 PM | 36,629 | 55,994 |
| Gross demand | 86,859 | Fri, 5 PM | 58,890 | 73,353 |
| Wind + solar | 35,704 | Fri, 1 PM | 2,948 | 17,359 |
| Forecast | Produced by | Method | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net load forecast | ERCOT (composed by Ask the Grid) | ERCOT load forecast, wind forecast, and solar forecast | As far as all three published forecasts overlap, hourly |
| Wind + solar forecast | ERCOT (composed by Ask the Grid) | ERCOT load forecast, wind forecast, and solar forecast | As far as all three published forecasts overlap, hourly |
Every input is a point forecast with no confidence interval, and their errors do not cancel — a demand forecast running high and a wind forecast running low both push net load the same way, so this series can be wrong by more than any one of its inputs.
Net load is demand minus wind minus solar — the electricity the dispatchable fleet has to produce once the renewables have delivered what they are expected to. It is not published by ERCOT as a feed; this page composes it from three forecasts that are, and plots all three so the subtraction is visible rather than asserted.
ERCOT has more solar than any other US grid and it all stops at once. The net-load curve is why: demand stays high through a Texas evening while solar falls to zero over about two hours, and the gap the gas fleet has to close in that window is where four-figure prices come from. Gross demand alone never shows it.
The shape to look for is the evening ramp — the steep climb in net load between roughly 4pm and 8pm, when air-conditioning load is still near its peak and the solar fleet is setting. That ramp, not the daily peak, is what tests the fleet.
A net-load point exists only for hours where all three forecasts do. The three feeds have different horizons, so this curve ends wherever the shortest of them ends — it is never extended by holding a wind or solar forecast flat past its own reach, which would invent the number the page exists to state.
curl "https://askthegrid.com/api/v1/grid/series?iso=ERCOT&metric=load_forecast&zone=SYSTEM&hours=168" curl "https://askthegrid.com/api/v1/grid/radar/curves?iso=ERCOT&horizon=extended"
Connect your agent to mcp.askthegrid.com and this forecast is a tool call away — the same host Claude and ChatGPT connectors already use.
Electricity demand minus the wind and solar expected to serve it. It is what the dispatchable fleet — gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, and batteries — is actually called on to produce, and it is the curve generators and traders plan around rather than demand itself.
Demand is everything the grid must serve. Net load subtracts the wind and solar expected to serve it, leaving what the dispatchable fleet — gas, coal, nuclear, and batteries — is actually called on to produce. In ERCOT the two diverge by more than twenty gigawatts on a sunny, windy afternoon.
The three inputs are. The subtraction is ours, and it is stated plainly for that reason: ERCOT publishes a demand forecast, a wind forecast, and a solar forecast, and this page combines them on matched hours without adjusting any of them.
Plotted window Aug 27, 8:00 PM CDT → Aug 29, 12:00 AM CDT. Recomputed whenever any of the three inputs is republished.
| Fri, 8/28 |
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| Sat, 8/29 |
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Darkest cells are the tightest hours. The window peaks at 72,804 MW on Thu, 9 PM, local to the market.