ERCOT Demand

Nodal Demand

Description

We model demand at the substation (node) level with hourly resolution to capture both intraday shape and seasonal effects. The primary input is ERCOT’s Long-Term Load Forecast (LTLF), which provides weather-zone hourly profiles through 2045 and separates demand into:

• Base (economic) load
• Behind-the-meter (BTM) rooftop PV
• Electric vehicles (EVs)
• Large flexible loads (LFLs)
• Large loads from Contracts & Officer Letters (hydrogen, data centers, crypto, oil & gas, industrial)

We use LTLF for Base, BTM PV, EV, and LFL. We do not take ERCOT’s Contracts & Officer Letters into our demand assumptions; instead, we apply Modo’s in-house bottom-up large-load build, informed by our research team. Oil & gas electrification assumptions are anchored to ERCOT’s Permian Basin Reliability Planning Study.

Central Case

Load profiles

Each load component exhibits a different profile based on function, price responsiveness and any on-site behind-the-meter generation.

Load Sensitivity

ERCOT’s LTLF timeseries data represents a “median” (p50) weather year using 2008 data. We extend this by enabling alternative weather-year load shapes to be layered on top of ERCOT’s values—supporting higher/lower demand cases and aligning the demand shapes with our renewable load-factor weather years for consistent scenario analysis.

Assumptions and Caveats

• Beyond 2034, demand growth is applied at the weather zone level, without explicit nodal detail.

Data Sources