Navigate to https://marketplace.spp.org and access the Real-Time Market Data and Day-Ahead Market sections; SPP publishes LMP data as downloadable CSV files updated at regular intervals — no API key is required for public data access.
For day-ahead LMPs, download the 'DA LMP By Location' report from the Day-Ahead Market section; the CSV contains columns for GMTIntervalEnd (UTC timestamp), settlement_location (pricing node), LMP (total), MLC (marginal loss component), MCC (marginal congestion component), and MEC (marginal energy component).
For real-time LMPs, download the 'RT LMP By Location' report from the Real-Time Balancing Market section; data is published at 5-minute intervals for each operating interval, approximately 5 minutes before interval end.
Construct a download URL by inspecting the network requests on the marketplace portal; SPP file URLs follow a consistent pattern with date and market type embedded in the path — automate downloads by constructing URLs for the desired date range and fetching each file.
Parse the CSV response: SPP uses GMT timestamps (GMTIntervalEnd) — convert to local Prevailing Central Time for display but store and process in UTC; note that SPP's market operates in the Central timezone for operational purposes.
For historical analysis, SPP retains several months of rolling data on the portal; longer historical archives may require a data request to SPP Market Operations — document the data retention period from the SPP market participation guide before committing to a historical backfill project.
Known gotchas
SPP Marketplace data files are structured CSV files but the URL patterns for automated download are not formally documented as a public API; URL structures may change without notice — treat this as screen-scraping and implement monitoring to detect format changes.
SPP settlement locations include both pricing nodes (PNodes) and aggregated pricing nodes (APNodes/trading hubs); ensure you distinguish between them when comparing prices — APNode prices are load-weighted averages and are not directly comparable to PNode prices for specific generators.
SPP and MISO share a market-to-market (M2M) coordination mechanism that can cause price divergence at their interface; nodes near the SPP-MISO border may exhibit congestion patterns driven by M2M flowgate constraints rather than purely SPP-internal transmission limits.
Give your agent this knowledge — and 200+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp