In the week ending August 22, 2026, hourly electricity demand on the Texas grid averaged 74.5 gigawatts, the highest weekly average in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s data for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT. The figure was 6% above the 70.0 gigawatts that stood as the weekly record from 2023, and 10% above any week of summer 2025.
It was no single-week fluke. The week after came in at 73.7 gigawatts, and six weeks in a row, from July 25 through August 29, cleared the 2023 line.
What a weekly average of 74.5 gigawatts actually measures
The EIA analysis, published September 3 from its hourly grid monitor data, tracks the average of every hourly load reading across a seven-day span. That makes it a measure of sustained demand, not of the worst afternoon. A weekly average of 74.5 gigawatts means the grid carried that much on average through nights as well as afternoons. The EIA says “sustained high temperatures” contributed to the persistently high demand.
Peak demand is a different, higher number. The EIA reported a separate hourly peak of 91.1 gigawatts at 6:00 p.m. Central on July 22, 2026, beating the previous record of 85.5 gigawatts on August 10, 2023, by about 6%. ERCOT’s own record table lists the same day at 91,134 megawatts and warns that figures posted during or just after an operating day are preliminary until settlement.
The weekly average of 74.5 gigawatts is about 82% of the July 22 hourly peak, a flat load curve for a Texas summer.
Weather alone does not settle how to read the gap with 2023, and the EIA piece stops short of assigning a share to demand growth. That summer also produced a hot August and a then-record hourly peak, yet its best week averaged 70.0 gigawatts. Three years later the best week averaged 4.5 gigawatts more, and the July peak topped the 2023 peak by 5.6 gigawatts. The EIA credits the July result to a heat wave and to growing electricity consumption in the ERCOT footprint, and it declines to say how much belongs to each, which is the honest limit of what a weekly average can show.
Who supplied the power on the record afternoon
On July 22 natural gas supplied 48% of generation and solar 32%, according to the EIA. A solar share that large changes the reliability picture, and Doug Lewin, Google’s Texas lead for energy market development, put it bluntly in comments carried by Utility Dive: “When PJM neared its peak demand record, they declared an energy emergency. Texas has blown past its pre-2026 record 7 times this month, [including] today. No emergencies, not even close. The difference? Solar.”
Texas has about 53.5 gigawatts of installed solar, per the Solar Energy Industries Association figure cited in that report. The EIA does warn that the July peak “could be surpassed again this summer” if another heat wave arrives.
Where the next tranche of demand is waiting
Heat explains this summer. Data centers, a much larger and slower-moving source of demand, explain the years ahead, and the state has begun to act on them. Governor Greg Abbott called on August 3 for a moratorium on new data center interconnections, and ERCOT told regulators it aims to audit roughly 300 data centers of 75 megawatts or more through what it calls Batch Zero, with a filing targeted for December 10. Chad Seely, ERCOT’s senior vice president of regulatory policy, said the goal is to head toward that December filing and acknowledged that a study originally due by April 9, 2027, will not meet that date.
The queue is the size of the problem. It totals about 474 gigawatts, roughly 90% of it data centers, against a grid whose weekly average just topped 74.5 gigawatts. The 17 large loads furthest along, mostly data centers, represent about 6.6 gigawatts of peak demand and are scheduled to come online later in 2026, and 157 medium-sized facilities add about 8,800 megawatts at some point. ERCOT also plans community impact reviews for data centers and crypto facilities of 25 megawatts and above, with requests for information rolling out from late August through September and more rounds expected in October and November, so the picture of what is actually coming will keep changing through the fall.
Long-term forecasts see the arithmetic changing quickly: ERCOT projects peak load reaching 154 gigawatts by 2035, and Ascend Analytics projects 120 gigawatts by 2030, per the Utility Dive report. Whether the July 22 peak or the August 22 weekly average survives next summer is open, and no source gives a date by which the pending data-center loads would first show up in the weekly averages.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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