ERCOT concluded August with an around-the-clock price of $34/MWh, essentially flat compared to last year. This came as a significant disappointment to many who were bullish on ERCOT. While cooler weather in 2025 certainly played a role, a key part of the bull thesis also hinged on anticipating substantial load growth.
However, our analysis shows that these large load growth expectations are back-ended, mirroring a trend we also see with new power projects.For those who already anticipated this and remain bullish on future load, it may be prudent to hedge some of this exposure. It's possible that many of these builds will be expedited to meet their deadlines. However, from a more pessimistic but realistic perspective, a significant portion of the 1 GW expected to come online by the end of the year could face delays extending into the following year and beyond. This forecast is based on the latest insights from our Vulcan platform, which uses the longest project timelines from a sample of completed projects to provide a more conservative estimate.
Vulcan clients can also delve into the supply side of this equation. We've already observed 6 GW of new capacity added to ERCOT, with the EIA-860M expecting another 13 GW by the end of the year. While delays are likely for some of these projects, there is a strong incentive to complete them before the "Big Beautiful Bill" tax effects take hold, which could potentially accelerate some timelines.
This Week's Vulcan Highlights
This week's highlights show our use cases for Vulcan continue to grow as we expand into monitoring U.S. pipeline expansions.
Using our platform, we were able to identify a major change in the NG3 pipeline on August 27th. This observation coincided with the pipeline beginning to flow, a development that required models relying on pipeline scrapes to quickly adapt.