On July 22, 2026, Texas set a new peak electricity demand record of 91,134 MW on the ERCOT grid, surpassing the previous record of 85,464 MW set in 2023. But Texas’ electricity demand didn’t just rise above the previous record once on one day; rather, Texas’ electricity load ran above the 2023 record in 187 separate hours on 34 different days this summer. The ERCOT grid — which represents about 90% of Texas’ electric load — served every one of those hours without a single statewide conservation appeal or grid-wide outage.
Summer 2026 had 34 days above the old peak demand record from 2023
Even though Texas is no stranger to heat, July and August were persistently hot. In fact, the summer of 2026 was the warmest summer on record for the contiguous U.S. This heat drove high usage of air conditioning, a large driver of electricity use in the Lone Star State and one of the reasons Texans pay the sixth-highest electricity bills in the nation, according to EIA.
Illustrated in Daily peak load beat the 2023 record on 34 days in summer 2026, Texas’ record demand hours in 2026 were not a one-day spike. The first came on July 21, when the state first broke the previous 2023 peak record, reaching 87,448 MW. Then the state broke it again the next day when peak demand reached 91,134 MW on July 22. From Aug. 11 through Aug. 31, daily peak load beat the 2023 record on 21 straight days. In 17 of the 187 hours, load topped 90,000 MW, and daily peaks went above 90,000 MW on seven days. Eight of the record days came in July and 26 in August.
Source: Texas 2036 analysis of ERCOT hourly load data; 2026 values are preliminary, pulled from ERCOT on Sept. 29, 2026 and may change before final settlements occur.
A decade of demand growth, accelerating since 2021
This summer’s peak records came on top of 10 years of steady load growth. ERCOT served 502.1 million MWh of load in the 12 months ending August 2026. That is 44.9% more than the 346.5 million MWh it served in 2016 and 29.8% more than the 387.0 million MWh it served in 2021.
Base load, defined as the hourly load that ERCOT’s load exceeded in 90% of the year’s hours, rose 55.8%, from 29,079 MW in 2016 to 45,305 MW in 2026. The growth, depicted in ERCOT base load rose 55.8% from 2016 to 2026, sped up after 2021: base load rose 17.0% from 2016 to 2021, then 33.2% from 2021 to 2026.
Record demand, no conservation calls or blackouts
Peak load grew too, but more slowly than base load. The highest hour of 2026, 91,134 MW on July 22, was 28.2% above the 71,093 MW peak of Aug. 11, 2016. The mean daily peak across average summer days rose 35.8%, from 60,835 MW in summer 2016 to 82,592 MW in summer 2026. Load factor, defined as mean hourly load divided by peak load, rose from 0.555 in 2016 to 0.629 in 2026, indicating demand is growing in ordinary hours as well as at the peak.
Despite this, the ERCOT grid held up well against this summer’s demand, with this summer’s reliability streak carrying Texans through all 187 record hours of 2026. Through Sept. 29, 2026, ERCOT’s news releases and its monthly operational overviews for January-August 2026 list no statewide conservation notices or emergency appeals. By comparison, ERCOT asked Texans to conserve on nine days in summer 2023, when it set the old record. That seems to indicate the current generation mix is working for Texans. A future post will explore the factors contributing to this summer reliability win.
