According to a recent LinkedIn post from Grid Status, the implementation of ERCOT’s Real-Time Co-optimization and Batteries (RTC+B) framework appears to have materially altered how real-time load is reported, notably by excluding charging from energy storage resources. The post indicates that this change has broken the previous tight relationship between real-time demand reports and settlement load, where storage charging largely explained a 900 MW to 1 GW spread observed by October of last year.
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The company’s LinkedIn post highlights that newly released post-settlement hourly load data for the RTC+B cutover day makes this structural shift in the data more visible. It suggests that after RTC+B went live, the prior correlation between real-time and settlement load, driven by storage charging, effectively disappeared, underscoring a new regime for interpreting ERCOT load metrics.
The post further notes that cost allocation in power markets remains complex, with batteries acting as net consumers, generators, or even transmission-like assets depending on context and program design. This framing implies that how storage is treated across different markets and tariff structures could materially affect revenue streams for storage operators and cost burdens for large-load customers.
For investors, the commentary suggests that the evolving relationship between real-time and settled demand in ERCOT could have implications for forecasting, hedging, and 4 Coincident Peak (4CP) exposure. If market participants’ models do not incorporate ERCOT’s revised load reporting and storage treatment, this may introduce basis risk and mispricing in power, capacity, and ancillary-service strategies, potentially benefiting data and analytics providers such as Grid Status that specialize in tracking these shifts.