Forecast wind output for the Texas grid plotted against what the fleet actually delivered — so you can see both what is expected and how the forecast has been behaving.
Wind output peaks at 22,988 MW on Tue 12 AM, against a low of 9,744 MW — a swing of 13,244 MW across the window. Wind forecast is the heaviest zone at 22,988 MW.
Plotted window Aug 10, 12:00 AM CDT → Aug 11, 12:00 AM CDT. New vintages published hourly; the latest 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 21,441 MW on Mon 8 PM; ERCOT wind forecast called it 22,342 MW — 901 MW high.
Each day of the window on its own.
Every hour of the window, shaded by load.
| 0 | 6 | 12 | 18 | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon, 8/10 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tue, 8/11 |
Darkest cells are the tightest hours. The week peaks at 22,988 MW on Tue 12 AM, and the daily band across the late afternoon and early evening is the solar ramp-down meeting air-conditioning load.
| Series | Peak (MW) | Peak hour | Low (MW) | Average (MW) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wind forecast | 22,988 | Tue 12 AM | 9,744 | 16,888 |
| Wind settled (recent) | 21,441 | Mon 8 PM | 9,435 | 15,575 |
| Forecast | Avg miss (MW) | Avg miss % | Bias | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ERCOT wind forecast | 814 | 5.4% | +814 | 23 |
The latest published vintage of each forecast, against what settled. Smaller is better on every column. Bias is signed: positive means the forecast ran high.
| Forecast | Produced by | Method | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wind forecast | ERCOT | Wind Power Production forecast, report NP4-742-CD | Hourly, forward across the published forecast window |
ERCOT publishes wind forecasts as point values by region, with no confidence band. The settled line shows how the forecast has been behaving.
ERCOT publishes an hourly wind generation forecast covering the whole Texas Interconnection. This page plots the system-wide forecast forward alongside recent actual output from the same feed, so the two are directly comparable on one axis.
Wind is the largest variable resource on the ERCOT system, and its forecast is one of the two inputs — with load — that set net load: the demand that dispatchable generation actually has to serve. A high-load day with a wind lull is the classic setup for tight reserves and scarcity pricing; the same load day with strong wind can clear at a fraction of the price.
The actual line is what the fleet delivered; the forecast line is what ERCOT expects next. Where the two have diverged recently is a useful signal for how much confidence to place in the forward part of the curve — wind forecasts tend to be least reliable during frontal passages and in the shoulder hours around a ramp.
curl "https://askthegrid.com/api/v1/grid/radar/curves?iso=ERCOT"
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 how much electricity the Texas wind fleet will generate, published by wind region and for the system total in report NP4-742-CD. ERCOT uses it to plan generation commitments and reserve requirements.
ERCOT has more installed wind capacity than any other US grid — well over 35 GW — concentrated in West Texas, the Panhandle, and along the South Texas coast. Wind and solar together supplied roughly a third of ERCOT's electricity in recent years.
Because wind displaces the most expensive generation on the system. When forecast wind is high, cheaper resources cover more of demand and prices fall; when a wind lull coincides with high demand, gas units further up the supply stack set the price, and scarcity pricing becomes possible.
Day-ahead wind forecasts are reasonably accurate in aggregate but can miss badly on timing — particularly when a weather front arrives earlier or later than modelled, which shifts a large ramp by several hours. Comparing the forecast and actual lines above is the most direct way to judge recent performance.
Net load is total demand minus wind and solar output — the portion that dispatchable generation has to serve. It is the number that actually determines how tight the grid is, which is why the wind and solar forecasts matter as much as the load forecast.