E3 has released the Second Edition of its 2026 Core Case Electricity Market Price Forecasts for all major North American wholesale markets: CAISO, ERCOT, SPP, MISO, PJM, NYISO, ISO-NE, Alberta’s AESO, Ontario’s IESO, plus the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest. This is the first edition delivered through the E3 Forecast Portal, an interactive platform that ties hourly prices to the load, dispatch, and renewable output behind them. Access is now offered in four tiers, from a single zone’s price stream to a multi-market annual subscription.
E3 updates its Core Case forecasts twice a year. For this edition, the team refreshed every major input, including load, fuel prices, near-term supply, resource costs, transmission limits, and policy targets. Near-term prices are now calibrated against recent market outcomes, capacity prices come with a range of scenarios, and each resource’s contribution to reliability is based on E3’s own analysis. Every market is modeled hour by hour across a 30-year horizon.
Everyone on the forecasting team also does client-facing consulting. E3 completes more than 400 projects a year for utilities, ISOs, regulators, developers, investors, and large energy users, which gives the team a close view of how questions like large-load growth, capacity accreditation, and interconnection are playing out in each market. E3 also uses these forecasts in its own consulting work.
On the Portal, each forecast is organized into prices, resources, regional transfers, revenue, and data visualization views, all at full hourly resolution. Panels share a linked time window, so a price spike can be traced to the net load, renewable output, and dispatch in the same hours. Users can look at a single week or a full year, view zones one at a time or on aggregate, compare day-ahead and real-time prices side by side, and export any chart as an image or as the hourly data behind it. Heat maps, price distributions, and duration curves are built in as well. Tier 3 users can also compare portfolios, dispatch, and prices across cases, markets, and forecast vintages.
Market highlights
ERCOT. Load roughly doubles by 2055 in the Core Case. Baseload growth from population and electrification is the largest piece, while large flexible loads and data centers drive the near-term acceleration. Solar leads near-term additions, and wind and solar make up most long-run capacity, with new gas paced by turbine backlogs and cost. As heating load and around-the-clock data center demand grow, scarcity pricing shifts from summer evenings toward winter mornings and evenings.
CAISO. Electrification, mostly EVs, drives California’s load growth in the Core Case, adding about 47 TWh by 2035 compared with roughly 4 TWh from data centers. Solar becomes the largest source of generation, and batteries shift the midday surplus into the evening, compressing daily price spreads. By 2035, the evening peak in SP15 average hourly prices has largely flattened.
PJM. Large loads are projected to grow more than 10% a year from 2027 to 2035, and the capacity market absorbs most of that pressure. E3 forecasts an unforced capacity shortfall peaking near 13 GW in the 2029/30 auction, with prices elevated but capped through 2031, before new supply closes the gap in the 2030s.
In E3’s fall webinar, Grant Freudenthaler, Vivian Li, and Tristan Wallace walk through ERCOT, CAISO, and PJM in the Portal, tracing prices back to load, renewable output, and hourly dispatch.
Jump to: Forecasting approach (7:25) | ERCOT (12:25) | CAISO (25:21) | PJM (37:54)
Forecast tiers
Every tier draws on the same Core Case for a given market and vintage.
- Tier 0, one price stream: hourly day-ahead prices for one zone or hub, downloaded through the Portal.
- Tier 1, market price bundle: standard price streams for one market, a short methods overview, and Portal access.
- Tier 2, standard market package: price streams, the market outlook, and key assumptions, plus standard Portal views and 4-6 hours with the E3 team.
- Tier 3 / Premium, custom annual package: multiple markets with regular updates, tailored Portal views and outputs, custom cases, and ongoing sessions with E3 experts.
Nodal and asset-level forecasts, technology-specific revenue modeling, and scenarios beyond the Core Case are available as separately scoped work.
Browse the forecasts and packages >
Download the forecast offerings overview (PDF) >
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For questions or tailored requests, contact marketprices@ethree.com.
