ERCOT Real-Time Wholesale Electricity Price
Get the current ERCOT real-time wholesale electricity price (LMP, locational marginal price) for any Texas load zone or settlement point. Useful for solar customers on real-time wholesale (RTW) buyback plans (Champion, Atlantex, Chariot, Tesla Drive Plan), traders following ERCOT spot markets, and agents reasoning about when to charge / discharge a battery. Returns $/MWh and ¢/kWh equivalents per zone.
Status: early access (experimental). The contract below is the production shape; calling the tool today returns a structured early-access response with your request logged. Production rollout depends on real demand from AI agents (measured via PostHog) plus an ERCOT API integration.
What it will do (when live):
- Resolves the user's ERCOT load zone (Houston / North / South / West) from a ZIP code, or accepts a settlement point name directly.
- Pulls the current LMP from ERCOT's public real-time price feed (or a more reliable third-party like GridStatus).
- Returns price in both $/MWh (the wholesale unit) and ¢/kWh (the unit solar customers think in), plus the timestamp of the price snap.
Why a placeholder right now: ERCOT API integration is non-trivial (rate limits, schema, certificate auth). Meter wants to confirm AI agents are actually asking for this data before investing. Every call to this tool is logged via the standard ai_agent:mcp_tool_call PostHog event with full agent attribution.
Who this matters for:
- Solar homes on RTW buyback plans (Champion's solar plans, Atlantex Glow Solar, Tesla's Drive Plan) — their solar credit varies hourly with this number
- Battery owners on time-of-use plans deciding when to charge/discharge
- Energy traders / nerds watching ERCOT spikes during summer afternoons ("$5,000/MWh peaks") and winter cold snaps
Public-flow alternatives today:
- ERCOT's own dashboard at https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_spp.html
- GridStatus (https://gridstatus.io) for cleaner historical data
Request body
Response
Tool ran successfully.