ERCOT · Pricing

ERCOT real-time LMP

Locational marginal prices from the latest SCED run, every ERCOT settlement point. Collected from ERCOT MIS, reconciled against the source file.

ercot-realtime-lmpevery 5 min · 5m rows1,118 entities
HB_HOUSTON
$34.21
2026-09-18 04:35 UTC
HB_NORTH
$34.25
2026-09-18 04:35 UTC
LZ_WEST
$32.64
2026-09-18 04:55 UTC
Read from the Dryos API and cached for an hour; the stream itself updates every 5 min.

What is in it

Updates
every 5 min · 5m rows
Entities
1,118 entities — HB_HOUSTON, HB_NORTH, LZ_WEST…
Source timezone
US Central — every timestamp Dryos serves is UTC
Coverage
15 August 2026 to now
Rows held
8,719,267
Primary key
iso, market, node, interval_start_utc
On the map
698 of 1,118 placed — EIA-860M plant coordinates, through ERCOT's unit mapping

What it measures

Every value, its unit, and what the source means by it.

  • Total LMP$/MWh

    The settled price. The only price field ERCOT populates.

    lmp_total

Columns

Exactly what a request answers with, read from the API rather than written here.

ColumnTypeDescription
interval_start_utcrequiredtimestampStart of the settlement interval, UTC. Always UTC — the ISOs publish in local time with inconsistent DST handling.e.g. 2026-08-14T15:00:00Z
isorequiredstringPublishing ISO.e.g. ERCOT
marketrequiredstringMarket the price cleared in: DAM (day-ahead), RTM (real-time, SCED), or RTPD for CAISO's fifteen-minute market.e.g. RTM
noderequiredstringPricing node or settlement point identifier, as published by the ISO.e.g. HB_HOUSTON
node_typestringNode classification. For ERCOT this is derived from the settlement point naming convention: HUB / LOAD_ZONE / DC_TIE / RESOURCE_NODE. For MISO it is the ISO's own pricing-node type: HUB (every aggregate, the eight trading hubs and the .AZ zones alike) / LOAD_ZONE / RESOURCE_NODE (a generator's node) / INTERFACE. For PJM it is the type on the row: HUB / LOAD_ZONE (a transmission zone) / INTERFACE / EHV / AGGREGATE for the aggregate streams, and RESOURCE_NODE (a generator's bus) / LOAD_BUS / EXTERNAL_BUS for the bus streams. For SPP it is read off SPP's own suffix on the Pnode behind the settlement location: HUB / LOAD_ZONE (a load area) / RESOURCE_NODE / DEMAND_RESPONSE / INTERFACE (a neighbouring operator). For CAISO it is the APnode type in CAISO's own reference: HUB (trading hubs) / LOAD_ZONE (every kind of load aggregation point) / RESOURCE_NODE / DEMAND_RESPONSE (a proxy or reliability demand resource, read off the resource id) / INTERFACE (intertie resources) / EIM_NODE (a Western EIM area's node — CAISO's EIMT, which holds the area's plants and its transfer points alike) / AGGREGATE (generation aggregation points, distributed-resource aggregations, flexible-ramp and imbalance-reserve zones). For NYISO it is LOAD_ZONE (the eleven zones) / INTERFACE (the four external proxy zones, the proxy buses of scheduled lines, and any generator NYISO files in an external zone) / DEMAND_RESPONSE (a demand-response provider) / RESOURCE_NODE (a bus in NYISO's generator reference, DER aggregations included) / LOAD_BUS (a bus NYISO prices beside the generators that no generator is registered to — transformer banks and load buses). For ISO-NE it is the location type ISO-NE publishes, a network node refined by the prefix on its name: HUB (the Internal Hub) / LOAD_ZONE (the eight) / INTERFACE (an external node) / DEMAND_RESPONSE (a demand-response aggregation zone) / HUB_NODE (one of the network nodes the Hub averages) / RESOURCE_NODE (a unit, UN., or a storage plant's asset-related demand, AR.) / LOAD_BUS (a load node, LD.).e.g. APND
lmp_totalrequirednumberTotal locational marginal price, $/MWh.e.g. 41.83
lmp_energynumberEnergy component, $/MWh.e.g. 39.12
lmp_congestionnumberCongestion component, $/MWh. Signed so that total = energy + congestion + loss on every row: NYISO publishes it with the opposite sign, and it is stored negated.e.g. 2.94
lmp_lossnumberLoss component, $/MWh.e.g. -0.23
source_published_at_utctimestampWhen the ISO published this interval, UTC. Lets a buyer distinguish 'we were slow' from 'the ISO was slow'.
collected_at_utcrequiredtimestampWhen Dryos collected this row, UTC. Stamped by the platform, not the collector. Together with interval_start_utc this makes freshness auditable per row instead of only in aggregate.e.g. 2026-08-15T21:22:09Z

Read it

Public, read-only, no key and no sign-up. Relative times stay relative, so a URL keeps working.

The newest rows

shell
curl "https://api.dryos.ai/v1/datasets/ercot-realtime-lmp/query?node=HB_HOUSTON&limit=12"

The catalogue entry — every column, its type and the source

shell
curl "https://api.dryos.ai/v1/datasets/ercot-realtime-lmp"

Hourly averages for the last day

shell
curl "https://api.dryos.ai/v1/datasets/ercot-realtime-lmp/query?node=HB_HOUSTON&start=-24h&interval=1h&agg=avg"

Full parameters — bucketing, aggregation, filters and search — are on the API reference.

Ask an agent

The same stream through the Model Context Protocol, so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client can query it directly.

shell
claude mcp add --transport http dryos https://api.dryos.ai/mcp

Then ask:

What has Total LMP been at HB_HOUSTON over the last 24 hours, and when did it peak?

Setup for every client is on the MCP server page.

Changes to this collector

A change in the collector is a change in the data. Anyone reading a step in a series is owed the day it moved under them.

  1. 2026-09-08

    Collects within the minute again; the record had read five to six minutes late on every interval.

    The delivery record showed every interval collected five to six minutes after ERCOT posted it. Two causes. Each run re-fetched the previous SCED file — the document filter compared publish times against the interval watermark, which the newest file always passes — and the upsert overwrote collected_at with the second fetch, so the record kept the later time. And an off-grid SCED run shifted the predicted window by half a cycle, so the two regular files after it were each found two minutes late. The collector sits on the shared MIS base now, filtering on the publish watermark; the window is predicted from the median phase of recent publications; a 30-second heartbeat outside the window catches anything the prediction misses; and the window polls every 4s from 15s before the stamp, since the listing shows a file about 40s after the time it carries.

How this stream is checked

  • Pulled straight from ERCOT MIS · NP6-788-CD — no reseller in between — and compared against that file before it is served.
  • Null means the source did not report it — never zero.
  • A reading lands every 5 min; the interval timestamp is the start of the interval, in UTC.
  • ERCOT settles and publishes on US Central time. Every timestamp Dryos serves is UTC.

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