After more than a decade of flat demand, load growth has returned to the Southwest Power Pool, driven by:
Several metropolitan and industrial regions across the Great Plains are showing 3-5% annual load growth from 2020-2025, driven by multiple factors ranging from housing growth to electric vehicles to data centers. Average daily peak load is growing faster than total system peak, indicating a shift toward always-on loads.
Load growth in SPP is highly uneven. Large industrial loads are driving baseload and peak demand in certain regions, in addition to population, housing, and meter growth. Each driver creates different load profile dynamics. Behind-the-meter solar increasingly absorbs daytime load, but average daily and system peaks are still growing. Net load is the operationally relevant variable now. Data centers continue to be a wild card in long-term forecasts.
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