Wood Mackenzie launches Nodal Price Forecast

Wood Mackenzie, the global insight business for renewables, energy, and natural resources, has launched its Nodal Price Forecast solution. The new offering delivers unprecedented granularity in ERCOT market forecasting, providing current-day and next-day locational marginal price (real-time market LMP) predictions across more than 900 nodes with hourly resolution updates.

The Nodal Price Forecast leverages Wood Mackenzie's proprietary sensor network – the industry's largest (>120GW of ERCOT coverage) – combined with advanced machine learning and AI algorithms, two years of historical market data, and the market's leading expert-driven forecasts to capture both typical and atypical market dynamics. The solution provides contextual insights that reveal congestion-driving factors including weather patterns, outages, and generation constraints, enabling market participants to optimize trading strategies and capitalize on arbitrage opportunities.

"ERCOT's complexity creates both challenges and opportunities for market participants," said Xizhou Zhou, executive vice president, head of Power and Renewables at Wood Mackenzie. "Our Nodal Price Forecast transforms this complexity into competitive advantage by providing the granular, accurate, and contextual intelligence that traders need to make profitable decisions.”

“While generic forecasting tools offer basic zonal predictions, Wood Mackenzie is delivering node-level precision, backed by the industry's most comprehensive data infrastructure. Most prominently, we are accelerating installation of sensors at major demand points such as data centres, giving incredible market intelligence to our clients."

The solution addresses three critical use cases for power market participants: congestion arbitrage trading, day-ahead market positioning, and real-time risk management. By identifying transmission constraints that create price differentials between nodes, users can capitalize on predictable congestion patterns and optimize asset dispatch during high-value windows.

Key features include:

• Unmatched granularity: Coverage of 900+ ERCOT nodes with hourly resolution forecasts
• Proven accuracy: Advanced algorithms utilizing proprietary sensor network data and expert market insights
• Actionable intelligence: Confidence ratings and contextual insights for informed decision-making
• Real-time advantage: Hourly updates for current-day and next-day market positioning
• Integrated expertise: Seamless API access with optional one-on-one analyst support

"Our sensor network represents our biggest competitive advantage in nodal price forecasting," Matthew Boyda, senior vice president of Power & Renewables Research at Wood Mackenzie. "Better data leads to better forecasts, which ultimately means more success for our customers. We're not just providing predictions – we're delivering the contextual intelligence that turns market complexity into profitable opportunity."