February 20, 2019
Capped vs. Uncapped Degree Days
In energy modeling, we often utilize spline variables to capture the non-linear relationship between consumption and temperature. These variables…
February 8, 2019
Leveraging a Waterfall Approach to Explain the Load Forecast
Our first brown bag seminar of the year is entitled “Leveraging a Waterfall Approach to Explain the Load Forecast”. This session introduces a…
January 23, 2019
2019 Forecasting Conferences – Register Today!
The 17th annual Energy Forecasting/EFG Meeting and Training will be hosted in Boston, Massachusetts on April 3-5 with optional one-day training…
January 9, 2019
A Consumer’s Perspective – Residential Solar with an Electric Vehicle
Recently, I wrote a blog on residential solar. In it, I mentioned that I needed at least a 6 kW system, but I installed a 7.25 kW system with 25…
December 19, 2018
When Does Humidity Make the Meter Spin?
For anyone that has tried to improve a model by changing the specification, you know it is very much a trial and error process. You create variables…
December 5, 2018
A Practitioner’s Guide to Short-term Load Forecast Modeling
Over the years, numerous clients have requested a “recipe book” for building powerful short-term load forecast models. This guide to Short-term Load…
November 20, 2018
Short-term Load Forecasting: A Practitioner’s Handbook
Our final brown bag seminar of the year—hosted on Tuesday, Dec. 4—is entitled “Short-term Load Forecasting: A Practitioner’s Handbook.” Ever wonder…
November 7, 2018
Aggregation Bias Strikes Again!
The issue of aggregation bias should not be a new concept to any of us in the energy forecasting world. In April, my colleague David Simons posted…
October 24, 2018
Odds and Sods
Probabilities and odds express the same information in different ways. In science and economics, people tend to think in terms of probabilities,…
October 10, 2018
What are Weather Groups?
If you’re a user of Itron’s Automated Demand Forecasting System, MetrixIDR, then chances are you’ve probably seen the words “Weather Groups” at some…
September 26, 2018
Residential Solar From a Consumer’s Perspective
I live in Southern California with a kid who runs the air conditioning like electricity is free and pretends that he lives in a frozen tundra. This…
September 5, 2018
Brown Bag Session: The Latest Energy Trends
Join us on Tuesday, Sept. 11 for our third Brown Bag seminar of the year as we reveal the results of our annual bench-marking survey. We are excited…
August 22, 2018
Market Trends That Will Drive the Next Evolution of Operational Load Forecasting Models
Grid operators schedule and dispatch generation resources to meet demand in as cost-effective manner as possible. In a perfect world, the least…
July 25, 2018
Will the Solar Panel Tariff Kill Solar Adoption?
The recent U.S. administration’s 30 percent tariff on imported solar cells and modules has not been well received by the solar industry. Effective…
July 11, 2018
A Simple Approach for Addressing Behind-the-Meter Solar Generation
I was recently asked to account for behind-the-meter (BTM) solar generation in a set of day-ahead hourly electric models. Fundamentally, the problem…
June 27, 2018
America’s Finest 2018 ISO Forecasting Summit
San Diego’s slogan is “America’s Finest City” and being fortunate enough to call this place my home for the past seven years, I see why. It has a…
June 13, 2018
Load Forecasting Using Machine Learning: Does the Hype Meet Reality?
It is easy to stub your toe on the voluminous literature available on machine learning when the question of how to improve your operational forecast…
May 16, 2018
2018 EFG Meeting Summary
Sometimes when I sit back and consider all the things that need to be done, I feel overwhelmed. The endless demands for regular work—like producing…
May 10, 2018
Upcoming Seminar: Budget Forecasting – A Practitioner’s Handbook
Our second brown bag seminar of the year is entitled “Budget Forecasting – A Practitioner’s Handbook.” This Brown Bag distills twenty-plus years of…
April 25, 2018
The Pitfalls and Pain of Aggregation Bias
As forecasters, averaging is something that we do a lot. We like averaging because it helps us filter out much of the noise in our data so that we…
April 11, 2018
Itron’s Integrated Energy Forecasting Framework
In today’s marketplace, incorporating the multitude of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) can make producing an accurate energy demand forecast very…
March 28, 2018
Daylight Saving Time: The Bane of the Load Forecaster
Sunrise and sunset times vary from summer to winter because of earth’s tilt with respect to its orbit around the sun. This difference is magnified at…
March 14, 2018
Take Our Annual Energy Survey
Itron’s forecasting group recently launched its annual energy survey. As we have done in previous years, Itron uses this survey to collect…
March 7, 2018
Ignore Missing Option
The Sum function in MetrixND seems like a complex way to make adding difficult. In a MetrixND transformation, numbers are added by joining variables…
February 14, 2018
Using Neural Networks to Build Robust Hourly Models
Our first brown bag seminar of the year is entitled, “Using Neural Networks to Build Robust Hourly Models.” Neural networks are flexible functional…
February 7, 2018
Dividing Two Interval Series in MetrixLT
In my previous post, I showed that MetrixLT can multiply two hourly data series even though the software was not designed for that specific purpose.…
January 30, 2018
Multiplying Two Interval Series in MetrixLT
“Help” was the desperate cry of a MetrixLT user after the close of the workday. “I need to multiply two hourly interval data series in MetrixLT!”…
January 10, 2018
2018 Forecasting Workshop and Meeting Dates
The 2018 Itron Forecasting Workshops and Meetings have been scheduled. Registration for 101 is currently open at…
December 27, 2017
Forecasting New Technologies – When Nothing Else Works
In a recent project, we were asked to help settle a question. Which forecast is reasonable: One forecasting average annual system demand growth of…
December 13, 2017
An Unexpected Impact of the Solar Eclipse
On Aug. 21, 2017, people gathered across the continent to witness the first total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous United States since Feb.…
November 28, 2017
Load Research in an AMI World: Why? How? And Results.
Our final brown bag seminar of the year is entitled Load Research in an AMI World: Why? How? And Results. With market penetration of a range of new…
October 31, 2017
There’s More Than One Way to Round a Number
When we were in school, we all learned the general rule for rounding – if a significant digit is followed by a number that is greater than or equal…
October 20, 2017
The CEC Releases “Improving Short-term Load Forecasts by Incorporating Solar PV Generation” Interim Report
The California Energy Commission’s (CEC) Energy Research and Development Division supports energy research and development programs to spur…
September 20, 2017
Calculating an Average Annual Growth Rate in MetrixND
After finishing my forecast, I like to present forecast average annual growth rates. These results are calculated by converting the monthly forecast…
September 5, 2017
The Latest Energy Trends
Our third seminar of the year reveals the results of our annual benchmark survey. Survey participants receive a copy of the report with the findings.…
August 23, 2017
Using the Simulation Object Backward
I’m using the Simulation Object in MetrixND to weather normalize historic sales. When configured, the object allows me to simulate the model…
August 9, 2017
2018 Important Meeting Dates – Mark Your Calendars!
The Annual Energy Forecasting/EFG Meeting and Training will be in Austin, Texas on April 24-27 in 2018! The ISO/RTO/TSO Forecasting Summit will be…
July 26, 2017
Computing a Weighted Average Wind Speed and Wind Direction Across Multiple Weather Stations
Often when we are developing weather variables to support day-ahead power and gas forecasting, we introduce wind speed as a standalone explanatory…
July 12, 2017
Looking Backward to Move Forward
For most things in life, I look forward to go forward. I keep my eyes on the road ahead. I look before I leap. I aim at my target. But this summer…
June 28, 2017
Seasonal Sales? Not a Problem.
There is a client who has a reporting issue problem. Let’s call him Ray. His annual sales are to be split into summer and winter sales, but on a…
June 19, 2017
Remember the 2017 ISO Forecasting Summit
This year’s 11th Annual ISO/RTO/TSO Forecasting Summit was held in San Antonio, Texas from May 16-18. Just like the defenders of the Alamo banded…
May 22, 2017
Common Challenges at the Energy Forecasters Meeting
Turning to her left, then right, Grace finds herself surrounded by strangers – men and women from across the United States; there’s even one from…
May 16, 2017
Free Forecasting Brown Bag Webinar
Now in our 11th year of hosting Itron’s popular, free hour-long internet seminars on a range of forecasting topics, we take great pride in helping…
May 5, 2017
A Grand View
The view from the 96th floor of the John Hancock Center is amazing. From here, cars are merely dots between the straight rows of lights and people…
April 26, 2017
Behind-The-Meter Solar Generation and Real-Time Load Forecasting – Part 3
In my blog posting “Behind-The-Meter Solar Generation and Real-Time Load Forecasting,” I presented four load forecasting challenges that have arisen…
April 4, 2017
Behind-The-Meter Solar Generation and Real-Time Load Forecasting – Part 2
In part on of this series, I presented four load forecasting challenges that have arisen as the result of deep penetration of behind-the-meter (BTM)…
March 2, 2017
Annual Energy Survey
Itron’s forecasting group recently launched their Annual Energy Survey. As we have done in previous years, Itron is collecting information to assess…
February 3, 2017
FREE Forecasting Brown Bag Webinar
Itron continues to host its popular hour-long Internet seminars on a range of forecasting topics. We’re now in our 11th year! Itron is always at the…
January 19, 2017
Forecast Tests in MetrixND
Out-of-sample tests are a useful tool for seeing how well a model performs with data it hasn’t seen before (i.e., data that weren’t used to estimate…
January 10, 2017
Energy Forecasting Meeting – Call for Presentations
Forecasters tell Itron that there is no greater value than meeting with their peers. Itron understands the importance of these interactions and is…
September 15, 2016
Declining Residential Sales?
In the past three months, I’ve received three questions, all the same, “Why are my residential sales down?” There are several reasons why a company…
September 6, 2016
Free Itron Forecasting Brown Bag Seminars
Join us for our third brown bag of 2016 on Tuesday, Sept. 13 titled “2016 Forecast Accuracy Benchmarking Survey and Energy Trends,” where we’ll…
July 19, 2016
Who is Forecasting Long-Term Solar Generation?
In this last forecasting brown bag presentation on solar load forecasting, we asked participants who had developed a long-term solar load forecast…
April 4, 2016
Developing the Peak Day Dataset Using MetrixLT
I think of MetrixLT as a fancy load shape manipulator and calculator. While the software was originally designed to calibrate load shapes to monthly…
March 8, 2016
Creating a Nonlinear Growth Variable
I love straight lines. After all, the fastest route between any two points is a straight line. But in forecasting, going from point A to point B…
February 9, 2016
Energy Forecasting Accuracy Trends Free Brown Bag Seminar
Interested in learning about the latest energy forecasting accuracy trends? Itron has been collecting information on industry growth expectations and…