BigDEAL Students Topping NPower Electricity Demand Forecasting Challenge 2015 with The Most Robust and Accurate Forecasts

A month ago, I posted NPower Forecasting Challenge 2015. Then four of my students (Bidong Liu, Xiaoqian Lyu, Jingrui Xie, Lili Zhang) formed a team to have fun in the competition. The competition attracted many teams worldwide. 33 teams completed the compeition, of which 23 are from U.K. universities.

This morning, the final leaderboard was just released. I was again very pleased to see the outstanding performance of the BigDEAL team:

• Ranking #3 on the average MAPE of the three rounds. The MAPE values of the three teams in the top cluster were extremely close: 2.42%, 2.47% and 2.48%. BTW, all top three teams were GEFCom2014 contestants, but not from U.K. universities. 
• The only team managing to have less than 3% MAPE in all three rounds. The highest MAPE of BigDEAL's three rounds was 2.84%, which was the lowest one among all 33 teams. 
• The only team ranking top 2 twice; and one of the only three teams ranking top 10 in all three rounds. BigDEAL's rankings in the three rounds were #2, #7 and #2, respectively. 
• One of the only two teams with consistently improved MAPE throughout the three rounds. BigDEAL's MAPEs were 2.84%, 2.39% and 2.21%, respectively. 

Many thanks to NPower for organizing this fantastic competition. And congratulations, BigDEAL students!