ERCOT evening peaks keep gas dominant even as Texas solar generation breaks records
Gas provided 48% of ERCOT's all-time demand peak in July; solar growth has not changed who carries the evening load.
ERCOT's average hourly electricity load hit a record 74.5 GW during the week of August 22 (2026-08-22), the EIA reported on September 3 (2026-09-03), a number that landed without much evident market reaction.7
NYMEX Henry Hub front-month was at $3.02/MMBtu on September 23 (2026-09-23). That price largely reflects the EIA's May Short-Term Energy Outlook view that natural gas consumption by the power sector would stay near recent highs this summer but not set a record until 2027. The load data is running ahead of that framing.2
When ERCOT set its all-time peak demand of 91.089 GW on July 22 (2026-07-22), 6% above the previous record of 85.508 GW from August 10, 2023 (2023-08-10), natural gas provided 48% of the generation stack and solar provided 32%, EIA data show. That peak hit at 6:00 p.m. Central Time.5,6
The timing undercuts the solar-displacement narrative. EIA projects Texas solar output will reach 78 billion kilowatt-hours in 2026, well above the 60 BkWh projected for coal in ERCOT. Nationally, solar generation is forecast to grow 21% in 2026 and 18% in 2027, the agency said on September 10 (2026-09-10). But a 6 p.m. peak in mid-summer is not a solar problem. It is a gas problem.8,1
The Southwest Power Pool reached its own record of 57.9 GW on July 27 (2026-07-27), also late in the afternoon, EIA data show.5 The spread of peak-load records beyond Texas suggests the evening gas dependency is not a regional quirk.
U.S. electricity consumption reached 4,195 billion kWh in 2025 and is expected to rise to 4,269 billion kWh in 2026 and 4,399 billion kWh in 2027, EIA's latest Short-Term Energy Outlook projects. That 2% annual clip sounds manageable. But American electricity demand was flat for nearly a decade before 2025, and the driver this time is data centers and AI infrastructure that run around the clock.4 Data center servers already accounted for an estimated 7% of commercial sector electricity consumption in 2025, the EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2026 estimated, with that share projected to grow to between 22% and 33% of commercial building electricity use by 2050.1
Capital is moving to match it. U.S. companies are set to spend around $50 billion on coal and gas generation capacity in 2026, the IEA estimated, an amount the Financial Times described as the first such surge in more than a decade. Companies placed orders for some 20 GW in gas turbine generation capacity in just the first quarter of 2026 (2026-Q1), IEA data show.3
Industrial gas consumption adds another layer. It averaged a record 23.6 billion cubic feet per day in 2025, up from the previous record of 23.4 Bcf/d set in 2023, the EIA noted.1 The flat power-sector summer is unfolding against record industrial burn — there is no obvious slack in the system to absorb an unexpectedly cold or demand-heavy winter.
The EIA's 2027 record forecast will look conservative if ERCOT's evening dispatch data through winter 2026-27 shows gas holding at or above its July peak-hour share. NYMEX Henry Hub front-month at $3.02/MMBtu on September 23 (2026-09-23) prices in a benign outcome. The hourly dispatch data from this past summer does not obviously support one.5,7