Last week, we published Measuring ERCOT Demand, a special report which described our methodology of weather normalizing historical ERCOT demand and measuring the structural load growth that is occurring independently from year-to-year weather variations. We use the term “structural demand/load” to mean the demand that would have occurred over a given period under normal weather conditions. In this report, we will dive deeper into how these growth trends differ from across regions and seasons within ERCOT. To start, here is the ERCOT-wide, annual, demand growth rates for both raw demand and our structural demand growth calculation, reprinted from the previous article:

Figure 1 – Historical and structural demand and demand growth for ERCOT

As we mentioned, while 2023 experienced a hot summer that resulted in a great deal of energy price volatility, it had milder weather than 2022 on an annual average demand basis.