News
Texas power demand stays below forecasts while PJM grid faces record winter peak risks
Tuesday, January 27, 2026 at 09:53 AM
A recent winter storm resulted in Texas power demand peaking at 76GW, lower than the 83GW forecast due to business closures. Attention has shifted to the PJM grid, which anticipates a record winter peak of 147GW amid 20GW of unplanned outages. Entergy reported significant outages in Mississippi and Louisiana, while the Texas grid remains stable with less than 1% offline.
Context
The Texas power grid successfully weathered the recent winter storm as demand peaked at 76GW, well below the anticipated 83GW. This load miss, primarily driven by proactive business closures, allowed real-time prices to settle at $150-300/MWh, far lower than the $1-2K day-ahead expectations. While Texas maintained high reliability with under 1% outages, attention has shifted to the PJM grid, which is currently forecasting a potential all-time winter peak of 147GW.
Current risks for PJM are heightened by 20GW in generation outages, exceeding NERC projections as prolonged cold tests a system already strained by AI data center demand. Regionally, Entergy reported 5-10% of its capacity in Mississippi and Louisiana is offline due to infrastructure damage. For investors, these events highlight the critical dependency of the semiconductor and AI supply chains on grid resilience, as extreme weather continues to challenge the high-capacity energy infrastructure required for advanced computing operations.
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Entergy
ETR