The Mile-High 2019 ISO Forecasting Summit
They have a saying in Denver – “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” While that is clearly an exaggeration, it’s not too far off from…
It’s All the Same, Only the Names Will Change
Last year, Itron was contracted by a small utility (about 11,000 customers) to construct a 10-year-ahead load forecast for capacity planning. I was…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
The Difference Between AR(1) and Lagged Dependent Terms
Recently, a utilities regulator tried replicating a client’s regression model used for forecasting customer growth. The regulator wished to build the…
Comparison of Peak Forecasting Methods Brown Bag Seminar Recap
On Tuesday, March 24, we held our first brown bag seminar of the year, “Comparison of Peak Forecasting Methods,” which provided an overview of peak…
Holiday Savings
With Christmas rapidly approaching and neighborhoods throughout North America intricately decorated with a variety of Christmas lights, I can’t help…