Live market data
SPP net load forecast
Southwest Power Pool'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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Southwest Power Pool's own demand, wind, and solar forecasts, combined into the number generators actually plan against — with every input shown alongside it.
How much of SPP's demand will the wind cover this week?
SPP net load peaks at 43,775 MW on Tue, 4 PM, against a low of 9,322 MW — a swing of 34,453 MW across the window. Net load is the heaviest area at 43,775 MW.
Every line above, and who produced it.
The grid operator's own published forecast for these hours. Source: Southwest Power Pool (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 | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Thu, 8/27 |
| Series | Peak (MW) | Peak hour | Low (MW) | Average (MW) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net load | 43,775 | Tue, 4 PM | 9,322 | 25,848 |
| Gross demand | 56,244 | Mon, 5 PM | 32,484 | 44,444 |
| Wind + solar | 26,994 | Mon, 2 AM | 5,568 | 18,596 |
| Forecast | Produced by | Method | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net load forecast | Southwest Power Pool (composed by Ask the Grid) | SPP load forecast, wind forecast, and solar forecast | As far as all three published forecasts overlap, hourly |
| Wind + solar forecast | Southwest Power Pool (composed by Ask the Grid) | SPP 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 Southwest Power Pool as a feed; this page composes it from three forecasts that are, and plots all three so the subtraction is visible rather than asserted.
SPP carries the highest wind share of any US market, and net load is the number that states it. On a windy night the fleet can cover nearly all of the footprint's demand, driving net load toward zero; when a front clears and the wind drops, several gigawatts leave the supply stack in hours. The spread between those two states is the whole trading week.
Watch the minimum. SPP's net-load lows are the hours when wind is doing the most work, and they are also the hours when prices go negative.
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=SPP&metric=load_forecast&zone=SYSTEM&hours=168" curl "https://askthegrid.com/api/v1/grid/radar/curves?iso=SPP&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.
It gets close. On a strong wind night with mild demand the fleet can serve most of the footprint, leaving very little for thermal units — which is when SPP sees negative prices and units are paid to stop.
The three inputs are. The subtraction is ours, and it is stated plainly for that reason: Southwest Power Pool 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 → Sep 4, 1:00 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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| Sun, 8/30 |
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| Mon, 8/31 |
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| Tue, 9/1 |
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| Wed, 9/2 |
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| Thu, 9/3 |
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| Fri, 9/4 |
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Darkest cells are the tightest hours. The window peaks at 43,775 MW on Tue, 4 PM, local to the market.