Electricity + Control February 2017

eather can potentially impact every person, and every

business, on the planet, every day. When a company’s

profitability is dependent on weather, accuracy and insight

can be paramount to success… not to mention the effect weather can

have on utilities and industry.

An inexact − but critically important − science

Historically, load forecasting − in essence, predicting utility demand

and consumption − has been a complex and uncertain process. The

ability to accurately forecast load can help inform mission-critical

decisions across all operations, from electric power generation and

purchasing, to load switching, infrastructure and even staffing. In fact,

forecasting, whether it’s effective or not, can have ramifications for

all entities involved in energy generation, transmission, distribution,

marketing and financing.

One reason load forecasting has been challenging is that there are

multiple variables to take into account. These include time (hour of the

day, day of the week, weekday vs. weekend, and holidays); popula-

tion usage (types of customers, increased or decreased numbers of

customers, and changes in usage); special events (local, national or

international); and current, recent or projected energy prices.

That said, weather is arguably one of the most important pieces

of the puzzle.

Sunny with a chance of increased load

Extreme weather is often referred to as ‘an act of God’. No one can

predict the weather with absolute certainty. But, weather conditions

can significantly influence load, which in turn, may significantly influ-

ence performance and profitability. Variables such as temperature

and humidity have a direct correlation with energy consumption for

cooling and heating.

Two standard industry measures, THI (Temperature-Humidity

Index) and WCI (Wind Chill Index) are used by most utility compa-

nies. But other variables are important as well. Visibility, precipita-

tion and cloud cover can also affect consumption. As can whether

temperatures are above- or below-average, and how long a particular

heat wave or cold snap lasts. Quite simply, we believe accurate load

forecasting depends on accurate weather forecasting.

Leveraging accurate weather forecasts

and data analytics

At The Weather Company (further referred to as ‘the company’), an

IBM Business, significant investments have recently been made in

both:

• An improved weather forecasting system

• Data science capabilities

The resulting system was designed to create an industry leading

product that provides accurate, timely, and spatially resolute weather

forecasts while expertise in the latter allows us to convert these ac-

curate weather forecasts into user-friendly products for clients in the

utility and energy trading businesses.

The Load Forecast feature of our flagship, WSI Trader, is anchored

in advanced and proprietary weather and data science. In our experi-

ence, good load forecasts are strongly dependent upon good weather

forecasts. The company’s weather forecasting engine (Forecasts on

Demand, or FoD) is an automated system that produces hourly fore-

casts for all of the most relevant weather variables (e.g., temperature,

dew point, wind speed, precipitation, cloud cover, snowfall) at 4- m

spatial resolution across the globe, allowing for hyper-local insight

– of particular value to ISOs.

Improved models can help improve load forecasting

Thes company’s FoD forecasts are a skill-weighted blend of available

weather models, including the ECMWF, GFS, and NAM models (de-

terministic and ensemble), along with GFS MOS and the company’s

proprietary high-resolution weather model (RPM).

Weights are assigned to each model based on the optimal combi-

nation of bias-corrected model forecasts over the most recent weeks.

The first few hours of the forecast period are ‘forward-corrected’ based

upon the latest observations.

Energy and utilities sectors are weather dependent industries and weather can affect domestic load, commercial load and public

load, not to mention operations, efficiency and safety.

Robbie Berglund, The Weather Company

CONTROL SYSTEMS + AUTOMATION

Weather Forecasting Meets

Sophisticated Analytics

Electricity+Control

February ‘17