About GridStrain
For the first time in decades, U.S. electricity demand is climbing fast — and the biggest new driver is the data center. Training and running AI models takes enormous, around-the-clock power, and that load is landing on regional grids that were planned for slower growth. GridStrain tracks how hard each of America's major grids is working, hour by hour, using official government data.
Think of each grid region like a player's baseball card. Instead of batting average and home runs, you get a Grid Stress Index, a Peak Load, and a read on how clean — or fossil-heavy — the power is right now.
How to read the stats
Grid Stress Index
⚾ Batting averageCurrent demand as a percentage of the highest demand hour in the past 365 days. A reading near 100% means the grid is pushing toward its recent record. Because the EIA doesn't publish a single "maximum capacity" figure per region, we use the rolling one-year peak as the yardstick — so this is a measure of strain relative to how hard the grid has recently had to work.
Peak Load
⚾ Home runsThe single biggest hour of demand over the last seven days, in gigawatts (GW) — the raw scale of power the region is pulling at its busiest.
Clean Generation
⚾ On-base %The share of electricity being generated right now from wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and geothermal. A useful check on whether new demand is being met with clean power or not.
Fossil Baseline
⚾ Small ballThe gigawatts coming from coal, natural gas, and oil — the "heavy lifting" fossil generation that fills in when renewables dip.
State electricity rates
The Ratesmap tracks residential electricity prices state by state. EIA reports rates by state, so we store and display by state — a grid region is only ever shown as honest context ("most of your power comes from {region}"), never blended into your rate.
Residential rate
⚾ Price per kWhEIA derives a state's "price" as total revenue divided by the electricity sold — a proxy for the average rate you pay, not a surveyed tariff. We show it in cents per kilowatt-hour, plus the change since the full-year-2019 average and the average monthly bill (revenue ÷ number of customers).
Rate vs. demand
⚾ Cause & effectOn a state page we overlay your rate on the grid region's demand. Read it as correlation, not proof: rates rise for many reasons — fuel costs, grid upgrades, storms — not data centers alone. The rate is a statewide residential average while the demand is the regional operator's, so the two are related but not the same geography.
The regions we track
We follow seven of the largest U.S. balancing authorities — the operators responsible for keeping supply and demand in balance across their territory.
- PJM Interconnection — Mid-Atlantic · Data Center Alley. Serves Northern Virginia's Loudoun County, the densest data-center cluster on Earth. The bellwether for AI-driven grid strain.
- ERCOT — Texas. Texas runs its own grid. Booming data-center and crypto load meets summer heat and a fast-growing wind + solar fleet.
- CAISO — California. The solar-heaviest major grid. Watch the evening ramp when the sun sets and gas fills the gap.
- MISO — Midwest. Fifteen states across the nation's industrial midsection, with heavy wind and a large coal + gas baseload.
- Southwest Power Pool — Central Plains. The wind belt. On gusty nights renewables can supply the bulk of demand across the central plains.
- NYISO — New York. New York State, where downstate demand and upstate hydro + nuclear shape a distinctive fuel mix.
- ISO New England — New England. Six states reliant on natural gas, with growing offshore wind and a winter price sensitivity all its own.
- Southern Company — Georgia & Alabama. The Southeast's largest utility, spanning Georgia and Alabama — gas, nuclear, and coal, with fast-growing data-center interest around Atlanta.
- Tennessee Valley Authority — Tennessee Valley. The federal utility serving Tennessee and neighbors — a nuclear, gas, hydro, and coal mix across seven states.
- Bonneville Power Administration — Pacific Northwest. The Columbia River's federal hydro system powers Washington and Oregon — one of the cleanest big grids in the country.
- Arizona Public Service — Arizona. Arizona's largest utility — desert solar plus gas and the giant Palo Verde nuclear plant, under relentless summer heat.
- Duke Energy Carolinas — North Carolina & Upstate SC. The western Carolinas' utility — a heavy nuclear and gas mix serving fast-growing Charlotte and the I-85 corridor.
- Dominion Energy South Carolina — South Carolina. Serves South Carolina's Midlands around Columbia — nuclear, gas, and coal, with rising coastal and inland demand.
- Florida Power & Light — Florida. One of the nation's largest utilities — gas-dominant with the country's biggest utility solar build-out, under year-round AC load.
- Xcel Energy Colorado — Colorado. Colorado's largest utility, rapidly swapping coal for Front Range wind and solar.
- Nevada Power — Southern Nevada. Powers Las Vegas and southern Nevada — gas and a booming desert solar fleet under extreme summer heat.
- Public Service Co. of New Mexico — New Mexico. New Mexico's largest utility, transitioning from San Juan coal toward wind and solar.
- PacifiCorp East — Utah & Wyoming. Spans Utah and Wyoming — a coal-and-gas backbone increasingly paired with Interior West wind.
- Idaho Power — Idaho. Idaho's utility, built on Snake River hydro with growing solar — and surging demand from new chip fabs near Boise.
- NorthWestern Energy — Montana. Montana's main utility — hydro, wind, and coal across the northern Rockies.
Where the data comes from
Every number here traces back to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Hourly Electric Grid Monitor, a free, public, federal data source. We pull demand, day-ahead forecast, net generation, and generation-by-fuel for each region and store it so the site stays fast — with continuous hourly history going back to January 2019.
A note on timing:demand updates within about an hour, but some regions — notably PJM — report their fuel mix and net generation several days later. When that happens, a region's fuel-mix donut shows the most recent fully reportedhour, which may lag the live demand reading. The timestamp on each chart tells you exactly which hour you're seeing.
GridStrain is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the EIA or the U.S. government. Public-domain data is used under the EIA's open-data terms with attribution.