Live market data
What will ERCOT power prices do next?
ERCOT's four trading hubs on one axis: what settled in real time and what the day-ahead market cleared for the same hours.
Fetching the latest published forecast…
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ERCOT's four trading hubs on one axis: what settled in real time and what the day-ahead market cleared for the same hours.
The forecast peaks at 39 $/MWh on Sun 11 PM, against a low of 16 $/MWh — a swing of 23 $/MWh across the window. HB_NORTH is the heaviest zone at 39 $/MWh.
Every line above, and who produced it.
What settled — the realized values every forecast here is scored against.
The grid operator's own published forecast for these hours. Source: ERCOT.
The grid operator's own published forecast for these hours. Source: ERCOT.
The grid operator's own published forecast for these hours. Source: ERCOT.
Congestion is why these price apart. Each hub’s settled price with every forecast published for it.
Each day of the window on its own.
Every hour of the window, shaded by load.
| 0 | 6 | 12 | 18 | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun, 8/9 |
| Hub | Peak ($/MWh) | Peak hour | Low ($/MWh) | Average ($/MWh) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HB_NORTH | 39 | Sun 11 PM | 16 | 23 |
| HB_SOUTH | 39 | Sun 11 PM | 16 | 23 |
| HB_WEST | 39 | Sun 11 PM | 16 | 23 |
| HB_HOUSTON | 39 | Sun 11 PM | 16 | 24 |
| Forecast | Produced by | Method | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| HB_SOUTH settled | ERCOT | ERCOT SPP and day-ahead settlement point prices | Day-ahead prices are hourly; real-time prices settle during delivery |
| HB_WEST settled | ERCOT | ERCOT SPP and day-ahead settlement point prices | Day-ahead prices are hourly; real-time prices settle during delivery |
| HB_HOUSTON settled | ERCOT | ERCOT SPP and day-ahead settlement point prices | Day-ahead prices are hourly; real-time prices settle during delivery |
ERCOT's day-ahead price is a single cleared value with no confidence interval. Real-time prices can diverge materially when weather, outages, load, or congestion differ from day-ahead expectations.
This shows the settled real-time price at ERCOT's four trading hubs alongside the day-ahead price the market cleared for the same hours. The spread between them is the useful signal: it shows where conditions during delivery differed from what the market expected the day before.
ERCOT's day-ahead market is an auction. Participants bid, the market clears, and the resulting price is the market's collective expectation for the next day. It closes around noon before delivery and is financially binding.
Day-ahead clears on expectations; real-time clears on what actually happened. Weather misses, demand surprises, outages, and congestion can all move real-time prices away from the day-ahead clearing price.
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.
The day-ahead market is a financially binding auction that clears around noon for the following day. Its cleared prices are the market's own collective forecast of what power will cost — the benchmark any model has to beat.
It is a serious benchmark but a systematically imperfect one: day-ahead prices carry risk premia and hedging positions, so they diverge from real-time in predictable ways. The scorecard above measures that divergence over the last 24 hours at this hub.
Day-ahead clears on expectations; real-time clears on what actually happened. Unforecast outages, weather misses, and demand surprises all move real time away from day-ahead — and the spread between them is what virtual traders and batteries are positioned against.
Plotted window Aug 9, 11:00 PM CDT → Aug 10, 10:55 PM CDT. ERCOT clears day-ahead once daily and publishes real-time prices during delivery.
| Mon, 8/10 |
|---|
Darkest cells are the tightest hours. The week peaks at 39 $/MWh on Sun 11 PM, and the daily band across the late afternoon and early evening is the solar ramp-down meeting air-conditioning load.