ERCOT Load Growth, Data Centres and the Texas Reliability Problem Set

In April 2025 ERCOT published two load forecasts for Texas and told its board it would plan with the smaller one. The transmission service providers' forecast, built from the loads utilities say are coming, reaches a 2031 summer peak of 218 GW. ERCOT's adjusted forecast reaches 144,522 MW in 2031. The current record peak, set in August 2023, is about 85.5 GW. On our arithmetic the adjusted forecast is 66 percent of the utilities' number, and it still implies a 2031 peak about 1.7 times the existing record (144,522 divided by roughly 85,500).

The jump comes from data centers, and from a change in what counts as a forecast load. We think ERCOT is right to discount, and we think the discount should be published load by load. The way to narrow that gap is to make large loads carry more of the risk.