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KardashevLabs
Live accuracy tracker

How good is ERCOT's own load forecast?

Every day ERCOT publishes a day-ahead forecast of Texas load, hour by hour. This page is not our model. It is ERCOT's own number, scored against what actually happened. History runs back to 2019 and updates daily. Transmission planning, reserve margins, and market prices lean on this forecast; when it misses, the miss shows up downstream.

How to read this page
MAPE (mean absolute % error). On average, how far off is the day-ahead forecast from what actually happened, as a percentage of actual demand. Lower is better. Utility-grade load forecasts typically run 1-3% MAPE.
Bias. Whether the forecast consistently runs high or low. Positive means ERCOT systematically under-forecasts (actual load comes in higher than predicted); negative means it over-forecasts. Near zero is best; a small nonzero bias that's stable is normal and not necessarily a flaw.
Why this matters. ERCOT commits reserves and clears the day-ahead market based on this forecast. A forecast that runs low on hot summer afternoons is exactly the condition that produces scarcity pricing and reliability risk. Tracking this publicly turns a number buried in operational reports into something anyone can watch.

Live track record

Hours scored
67,987
2019-01-01 → 2026-10-09
MAPE
2.43%
mean absolute % error, all-time
Bias
-0.47%
ERCOT over-forecasts, on average
MAE
1,193 MW
mean absolute error in megawatts
Day (UTC)MAPEBiasMAE
2026-10-091.34%-1.11%761 MW
2026-10-081.41%0.19%851 MW
2026-10-070.71%0.36%439 MW
2026-10-061.94%1.89%1,211 MW
2026-10-051.72%-1.72%1,013 MW
2026-10-041.54%-1.11%874 MW
2026-10-030.50%0.31%300 MW
2026-10-022.39%-1.68%1,427 MW
2026-10-013.99%-0.24%2,526 MW
2026-09-302.01%0.88%1,374 MW
2026-09-291.01%0.16%705 MW
2026-09-281.17%1.02%749 MW
2026-09-270.65%0.56%406 MW
2026-09-260.97%-0.17%596 MW
2026-09-251.14%0.46%784 MW
2026-09-240.80%0.57%524 MW
2026-09-231.05%0.76%711 MW
2026-09-221.22%1.00%884 MW
2026-09-213.04%1.52%2,108 MW
2026-09-200.61%-0.51%442 MW
2026-09-191.47%-1.47%971 MW
2026-09-180.90%-0.42%671 MW
2026-09-171.00%-0.77%778 MW
2026-09-161.03%-0.86%797 MW
2026-09-151.75%1.40%1,264 MW
2026-09-142.07%1.56%1,504 MW
2026-09-133.31%3.31%2,251 MW
2026-09-120.87%-0.45%608 MW
2026-09-110.90%-0.17%615 MW
2026-09-101.89%1.54%1,303 MW

Methodology

Forecast and actual load come from EIA-930 (respondent ERCO): the DF series is ERCOT's published day-ahead demand forecast, the D series is realized demand. Both are hourly, system-wide. Every hour is scored exactly once, permanently: nothing here is revised after the fact.

This is a companion to our RT-DA spread forecast: that page scores our own model's price predictions; this one scores ERCOT's own load forecast. Same discipline: public, immutable, updated daily.