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California's True Demand

CAISO's published "demand" is really net load: actual consumption minus the output of ~19 GW of behind-the-meter rooftop solar that nobody meters in real time. This tracker models that invisible fleet — 2 million systems across 1,500+ ZIP codes — from clear-sky physics and live cloud cover, and reconstructs true demand = CAISO demand + invisible solar.

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CAISO demand (net)
GW
what the grid sees
Invisible solar now
GW
rooftop output, modeled
True demand now
GW
net + invisible solar
Share of demand invisible
%

Today, 5-minute resolution

The gap between the red and blue lines is rooftop solar the official number never sees.
True demand 15% band) CAISO net demand Invisible solar modeled ahead
View as table (30-min)
TimeCAISO net (MW)Invisible solar (MW)True demand (MW)

Where the invisible fleet is producing

Every circle is a ZIP code. Size = installed capacity · color = output right now ( PT).
Capacity factor now: 0% → 80%+ circle area ∝ installed kW

Method & sources

Fleet: every NEM/NBT interconnected PV system in PG&E, SCE & SDG&E territory (the CAISO IOU footprint) from the CPUC / California DGStats interconnection dataset, aggregated to ZIP with capacity-weighted tilt & azimuth. Production model: per-ZIP clear-sky irradiance (pvlib Ineichen, elevation-aware) attenuated by live NWP cloud/irradiance (Open-Meteo), Erbs decomposition, Hay-Davies transposition, cell-temperature correction, and a fleet loss factor. Demand: CAISO Today's Outlook, 5-minute. Estimates carry a ±15% band — this is a model, not a meter; EIA publishes the official (monthly, lagged) estimate. Excludes non-CAISO utilities (LADWP, SMUD…). Cloud data ahead of the current time is a forecast (dashed).

Part of eshansingh.xyz · like the battery locator and CA grid map, this page refreshes its data automatically through the day.