Ask the Grid

Investment-grade alerting on the live grid.

Watch the grid evolve in real time. Define the condition that matters to your desk or your asset — a price on a node, reserve headroom across the ISO, a forecast pulling away, an event near your plant — and get told the moment it actually happens, with the market context already attached.

Create alert rule builder — event or live-value trigger, minimum severity, market target, and live evidence with replay history
Alert editorAsk the Grid

How a rule is built.

A rule is a short pipeline of explicit decisions. Each one draws from a fixed, typed vocabulary — no free-text guessing — so what a rule watches, and what makes it fire, is legible end to end.

One rule · five decisions · every one inspectable

  1. 01scope

    Scope

    • asset · area · grid
  2. 02trigger

    Trigger

    • grid_event · radar_threshold
  3. 03condition

    Metric & condition

    • metric · operator · test
  4. 04severity

    Severity

    • info → emergency
  5. 05delivery

    Delivery

    • email · tracked send
01

Scope

Name what you are watching. A single asset or settlement point, an area drawn on the map with a radius, or the grid as a whole.

  • asset — one node, unit, or plant
  • area — a dropped pin with a radius, or a lassoed boundary
  • grid — the whole ISO
02

Trigger

Choose what kind of change you are listening for: a published grid event, or a threshold on a live measured signal.

  • grid_event — notices, advisories, emergencies
  • radar_threshold — a measured value crossing a line
03

Metric & condition

For a value trigger, pick the metric, the direction, and how the line is tested — a fixed level, a percent move over a lookback, or a break against a moving average.

  • metric — real-time price, load, reserve headroom, outages, forecast divergence
  • operator — above or below
  • condition — threshold · percent_change · moving_average
04

Severity

Set the severities that count. Event rules fire on the levels you accept; every occurrence carries its severity so you can triage on arrival.

  • info
  • watch
  • warning
  • emergency
05

Delivery

The rule evaluates against live data, records each occurrence and transition, and delivers by email with a tracked send status.

  • occurrences — activated · recovered · event observed
  • delivery — pending · sending · sent · failed
  • email destination

Rules a desk or operator would build.

Every row below is a real, buildable rule — a live metric, a scope, a condition, and a severity. Take any of them straight into your account and adjust the numbers to your book.

RuleScopeTriggerConditionSeverityAdd
West-hub price ceilingTrading desknode · HB_WESTradar_thresholdReal-time price above $250/MWhWARNINGAdd to account
Houston hub momentumTrading desknode · HB_HOUSTONradar_thresholdReal-time price up more than 40% over 60 minWATCHAdd to account
Node breaks its averageTrading desknode · my settlement pointradar_thresholdReal-time price above its 60-min moving averageINFOAdd to account
Reserve headroom floorAsset operatorgrid · ERCOTradar_thresholdReserve headroom below 3,000 MWWARNINGAdd to account
System load ceilingAsset operatorgrid · ERCOTradar_thresholdSystem load above 75,000 MWWATCHAdd to account
Outage step-changeAsset operatorgrid · ERCOTradar_thresholdReported outages above 10,000 MWWARNINGAdd to account
Forecast is divergingAsset operatorgrid · ERCOTradar_thresholdLoad forecast divergence above 10%WATCHAdd to account
Event near my plantAsset operatorarea · 50 km around my assetgrid_eventNew warning+ grid event inside the radiusWARNINGAdd to account
INFONoted — worth a glance, no action implied.WATCHConditions are building toward something.WARNINGA defined line has been crossed.EMERGENCYGrid-critical — the operator is acting.

Situations, and the rule that covers each one.

Two desks watch the same live spine for different reasons. Each situation below is followed by the rule that answers it, written in the builder’s own vocabulary, with the markets where that exact rule is executable today.

01Trading desks

The move, the instant it happens — on the node you actually trade.

Price, congestion, and spread behavior on specific settlement points and assets. Set the level, the percent move, or the break against a rolling average, and get told with the market state attached.

02Asset operators

The grid closing in on your plant — reserves, outages, and the forecast.

Reserve headroom, system load, reported outages, and forecast divergence for the grid your asset lives on — plus event alerts inside a fixed radius around a dropped pin, or a boundary you lasso.

01
Trading desk

The spike only matters when the whole system is tight.

A number on one node fires on local noise as readily as on a real move. A second condition, AND-composed, holds the rule shut until the node and the system agree. Up to three can be combined, each watching a distinct signal; nodal conditions read your own target, system conditions read the market.

  • scope · asset — one settlement point
  • when · real-time price above $250/MWh
  • and · reserve headroom below 3,000 MW, grid-wide

markets · ERCOT

02
Trading desk

The twenty settlement points you actually trade, in one rule.

Multi-select the nodes on the map and freeze that selection into the rule. Any member can activate it and each one carries its own evidence, so one rule replaces twenty near-identical ones you would otherwise keep in sync by hand.

  • scope · area — up to 20 node members frozen from the map
  • when · DA/RT spread above $50/MWh at any member

markets · ERCOT · CAISO

03
Trading desk

The node moved — but was it congestion, or the whole market?

The congestion component is the node's real-time price minus the SCED system lambda. Watching it directly separates a local binding constraint from a system-wide price move, instead of reconstructing the difference after the interval settles.

  • scope · asset — one settlement point
  • when · congestion component above $50/MWh

markets · ERCOT

04
Trading desk

You do not know the right number yet.

Before arming a rule, replay the draft over up to 30 days of the same source history, through the same arithmetic and the same confirmation state machine that scheduled evaluation uses. You get how many times it would have activated, how long each episode ran, and the peak reading each one hit — then you set the level and the hold.

  • draft · any value rule, unsaved
  • replay · up to 30 days of source history
  • hold · confirm after 1–60 minutes, or immediately

markets · Wherever a value rule is executable

05
Asset operator

Only the notices that mean the operator is acting.

Take the whole market's event feed but keep the floor high. In ERCOT, an operations message naming an Energy Emergency Alert, EEA2 or EEA3, or a controlled outage is classified emergency. Conservation appeals and emergency-operations language sit one level below at warning, and watch, advisory, and manual-action language one level below that.

  • scope · grid — the whole market
  • when · a new grid event at Emergency
  • choices · all events · watch+ · warning+ · emergency

markets · ERCOT

06
Asset operator

A notice that lands on the ground around your site.

Drop a pin on the site and freeze a radius around it. An event matches when a reported subject location or an attached shape falls inside that circle — or when the event's own polygon covers the pin. Revisions and cancellations arrive as their own transitions rather than as a silent edit to something you already read.

  • scope · area — a pin and a 25 km radius, frozen from the map
  • when · a new grid event inside the radius
  • floor · warning and above

markets · ERCOT

07
Asset operator

The area you care about is not a circle.

Lasso the boundary on the map and the rule freezes that exact shape. An event matches when its reported location or attached shape falls inside your boundary, and also when the event's own polygon covers the area you drew — so a wide-area notice is not missed because none of its vertices happen to sit inside your line.

  • scope · area — a boundary lassoed on the map
  • when · a new grid event inside the boundary
  • floor · all events

markets · ERCOT · NYISO

08
Asset operator

The condition sits on the line and oscillates all afternoon.

A confirmation hold makes the rule wait until the condition has actually held; a recovery hold makes it wait before it calls the episode over. A rolling 24-hour delivery cap bounds the mail either way — and every trigger is still recorded in the rule's activity, even when its email is suppressed.

  • confirm · hold the condition 1–60 minutes first
  • recover · require 1–60 minutes back to normal
  • cap · 1–100 emails per rolling 24 hours, 10 by default

markets · Wherever a value rule is executable

Watch the grid evolve — then get told when it does.

Alerts run on the same live spine as the map, the radar, and grid events. The condition you set is watched against the surface you can already see.

The Ask the Grid radar — live grid conditions across the ISO
Radar — the live surface the alert engine readsAsk the Grid

From condition met to your inbox.

When a rule fires, it arrives with the situation attached — pinned to where it happened on the grid, and recorded in a triage view that tracks every occurrence and delivery.

A triggered Ask the Grid alert for RHESS2_ESS1 real-time price, with the reading, limit, and other watched rules
Alert firing in market contextAsk the Grid
The Ask the Grid alerts inbox: triggered and watching rules, and an activity timeline entry with full trigger evidence
Alerts inbox / triageAsk the Grid
An Ask the Grid alert email: the HB_WEST real-time price ceiling rule firing at $312.4/MWh, with what happened, why it matters, what to check, the source link, and an open-in-app button
The alert email, as receivedAsk the Grid

The mail carries the reasoning, not just the trigger.

It goes to the account address on the rule. A value rule’s mail carries the reading and the arithmetic behind it; an event rule’s carries the operator’s own title and summary, unrewritten.

Subject

[Alert] followed by what happened — readable without opening it.

Header

Alert triggered, the scope it fired on, and the rule's own name.

The reading

The value that crossed, formatted with its unit.

What happened

The reading stated against your configured reference — a threshold, a percent move over the lookback, or the trailing average it crossed.

Why it matters

Deterministic arithmetic over the same observations: how far past the reference, how long the condition has held, which direction it moved over the last 15 minutes, and any combined condition that also matched.

What to check

The concrete next look, written per metric — not a generic prompt.

Confidence

How old the source reading was and how many observations it was evaluated from.

Source

On an event alert, a link to the operator's own record when the source publishes one.

Open in Ask the Grid

A deep link to the target on the map when the rule names a single one; otherwise to the ISO radar.

Define the condition. We’ll watch the grid.

Draw your scope, set a rule, and let it run against live data — or explore the rest of the platform first. No demo call, no gated PDF.