US Power & Utilities: Watt’s Happening in ERCOT?

Research evidence excerpt

US Power & Utilities: Watt’s Happening in ERCOT?

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US Power & Utilities

Watt’s Happening in ERCOT?

Industry Overview

ERCOT requests adjustments to Long-Term Load Forecast 19 May 2026

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has filed a proposal with the Public Equity

Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) to revise its long-term load forecast (Project No. United States

59772), with a decision expected at the June 18 Open Meeting. The filing effectively Utilities

acknowledges that ERCOT’s April outlook overstated demand, primarily due to overly Ross Fowler, CFA

aggressive assumptions around datacenter and crypto load realization. While the original Research Analyst

forecast projected peak demand of 278 GW by 2029 and 368 GW by 2032, ERCOT now BofAS+1 646 855 1506

highlights significant execution risk tied to project timelines, supply chain constraints, ross.fowler@bofa.com

and interconnection uncertainty. F. Paul Cole

Research Analyst

BofAS

+1 646 743 2122ERCOT proposal makes a smaller, but realer forecast

paul.cole2@bofa.com

To address this, ERCOT proposes two recalibration approaches: (1) a historical

Rinny Singh

realization framework, which would imply roughly a 45% reduction to the forecast, and Research Analyst

(2) the Batch Zero methodology, which focuses on validated, transmission-backed BofAS

+1 646 855 5729

projects. While Batch Zero figures will not be finalized until mid-August, they are also rinny.singh@bofa.com

expected to result in a meaningful reduction versus the prior forecast, and ERCOT has Nicolas Woods

explicitly indicated a preference for this approach given its stronger grounding in Research Analyst BofAS

executable infrastructure. Although the headline suggests a material downward revision +1 646 556 4179