Mark Your 2017 Calendar: Tao's Recommended Conferences for Energy Forecasters

I didn't realize the overdue of this post until I just hit the road for my first trip of 2017. Here is the 2017 list of my recommended conferences for energy forecasters:

1. International Symposium on Energy Analytics (ISEA2017, Cairns, Australia, June 22-23, 2017)

Even if you missed all the other events down this list, you can still find the year rewarding by attending ISEA2017, the first-ever gathering of world-wide energy forecasters. Our generous sponsors, the International Institute of Forecasters (Super Sponsor), Tangent Works (Gigawatt Sponsor) and the State Grid Electric Power Research Institute (Kilowatt Sponsor), have helped bring the registration fees down. There are many reasons to join the party. You will meet the winners of GEFCom2017. You will hear the presentations from world-class energy forecasting researchers and practitioners. You will network with energy forecasting colleagues from more than a dozen countries. And of course, you will enjoy two World Heritage sites side-by-side.

2. Tao's courses

The next two SAS courses on load forecasting have been scheduled in Charlotte, March 27-29.

• Electric Load Forecasting: Fundamentals and Best Practices
• Electric Load Forecasting: Advanced Topics and Case Studies

In addition, I'm going to teach these three courses through EUCI:

• Fundamentals of Utility Analytics: Techniques, Applications and Case Studies
• Introduction to Energy Forecasting
• Long Term Load Forecasting

Stay tuned with the training page of Hong Analytics for the recent updates of all training courses.

3. Conferences from other professional organizations

I will attend the following three, as always:

• International Symposium on Forecasting (ISF2017, Cairns, Australia, June 25-28, 2017)
• IEEE PES General Meeting (PESGM2017, Chicago, IL, USA, July 16-20, 2017)
• AEIC/WLRA Annual Conference (Time & Location TBD)

Look forward to seeing you in these fantastic events!

Hong Analytics One Year Anniversary: A 60-hour Energy Analytics Curriculum

One year ago, I incorporated Hong Analytics LLC to house my consulting practices. At this anniversary, I would love to review a major milestone that was recently accomplished:

A 60-hour energy analytics curriculum. 

One of the frequently asked questions I have been getting from my clients is

Tao, can you recommend some training courses I should take?

If a SAS user asked me this question, my answer would be easy:

Check out the list of my recommended SAS courses.

While the list was put together two years ago, it can no longer address all the needs from my clients. For instance, some clients want to know more about the applications of analytics in the utility industry; some do not have access to advanced analytics software; some need to develop wind and solar forecasts rather than load forecasts; some are interested in the state-of-the-art load forecasting methodologies.

To bridge the gap, I have developed a 60-hour (or 7.5 days) energy analytics curriculum. The curriculum is made of 5 courses as illustrated below:

A 60-hour Energy Analytics Curriculum

1. T101/ Fundamentals of Utility Analytics: Techniques, Applications and Case Studies
2. T201/ Introduction to Energy Forecasting
3. T301/ Electric Load Forecasting I: Fundamentals and Best Practices
4. T302/ Long Term Load Forecasting
5. T401/ Electric Load Forecasting II: Advanced Topics and Case Studies

If you are new to the industry, analytics, or both, you can start with T101. If you are new to energy forecasting, T201 would be a good start. T301 is the flagship course that has accommodated a wide range of audience. If you are a long term load forecaster using MS Excel, you may take T302. If you are looking for the secret sauce, T401 is the level you should reach.

Did I forget to develop a master level course? No. Nobody can become a master in 60 hours. One may be able to talk like an expert after completing this 60-hour curriculum. To reach the master level, one has to spend 10,000 hours on the subject. Of course, the BigDEAL would be the #1 choice for energy forecasters!

The next offering of Fundamentals of Utility Analytics has been scheduled in Chicago, IL, August 10-11, 2016. Look forward to seeing some of you over there!

Mark Your 2016 Calendar: Tao's Recommended Conferences for Energy Forecasters

Last year I made a list of recommended conferences for energy forecasters. I think it is time to refresh the list for my 2016 calendar. Hopefully you will find the list useful as well.

1. Tao's courses

The next two SAS courses on load forecasting have been scheduled in Charlotte, March 9-11.

• Electric Load Forecasting: Fundamentals and Best Practices
• Electric Load Forecasting: Advanced Topics and Case Studies

I'm also going to teach three courses through EUCI:

• Fundamentals of Utility Analytics: Techniques, Applications and Case Studies
• Introduction to Energy Forecasting
• Long Term Load Forecasting

Stay tuned with the training page of Hong Analytics for the recent updates of all training courses.

2. 2016 PES T&D Conference & Exposition (T&D2016, Dallas, TX, May 2-5, 2016)

This is a bi-annual conference gathering "more than 700 companies and thousands of professionals from more than 80 countries around the world". Although the conference does not have much to do with forecasting, the exposition is indeed eye-opening. It is important for an energy forecaster to understand how the power grid is operated. This conference is that one-stop shop to see the new products and service offerings from the major industry players. I've been attending this conference since 2010. This year I'm going to present a paper "from high-resolution data to high-resolution probabilistic load forecasts".

3. 13th International Conference on the European Energy Market (EEM16, Porto, Portugal, June 6-9, 2016)

The conference organizing committee is launching an electricity price forecasting competition. It will be interesting to hear the methodologies used by the winners.

4. 36th International Symposium on Forecasting (ISF2016, Santander, Spain, June 19-22, 2016)

I'm organizing a session "load forecasting: research progress and challenges" at ISF2016. The session includes four talks:
What’s new in load forecasting since 2010? 
    Tao Hong | University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
Load forecasting using Lasso based time series methods
    Florian Ziel | European University Viadrina, Germany
Analysis of ex-ante probabilistic load forecasts at the low voltage substation level
    Stephen Haben, Siddharth Arora, Georgios Giasemidis, Tamsin Lee | University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Aggregate consistent forecasting algorithms for hierarchical electricity demand data
    Souhaib Ben Taieb | Monash University, Australia.
    James W. Taylor | University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
    Rob J. Hyndman | Monash University, Australia.

5. IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting 2016 (PESGM2016, Boston, MA, July 17-21, 2016)

We will have the 4th offering of our tutorial "energy forecasting in the smart grid era".

6. AEIC/WLRA annual conference (Chicago, IL, September 18-21, 2016)

AEIC Load Research Committee and Western Load Research Association will again have their joint meeting in Chicago.

7. 2016 International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems (PMAPS2016, Beijing, China, October 16-20, 2016)

This is also a bi-annual conference. The conference plays a big emphasis on dealing with uncertainties in power systems,  which is highly related to probabilistic forecasting. The full paper is due on March 31.

Happy Valentine's Day, and happy traveling!

Job Opening at SAS: Solutions Architect

Posting a job for my friends and former colleagues at SAS. SAS is well-known to be a best place to work. As a former SAS employee enjoying the SAS benefits in person, I have to say that whatever you read from the web are underestimating the comfort working for SAS. (BTW, this is why I left SAS.) If you are interested in joining SAS, please apply HERE.

Solutions Architect (Commercial Business Unit - Energy & Utilities)-20006794

Description

Mark Your 2015 Calendar: Tao's Recommended Conferences for Energy Forecasters

Update (3/1/2015): Due to high demand of my load forecasting courses, we added an offering at the New York City in May. 

Update (2/18/2015): I just confirmed two more speakers for ISF2015. Now we have six presentations in two sessions. 

Recently I received many inquiries about recommended energy forecasting conferences in 2015. First of all, I have never attended a conference that is perfectly designed and organized for energy forecasters, which motivates me to organize the ultimate energy forecasting conference. If you have to wait for this ultimate one, close this page and stay tuned for another two years. Otherwise, keep reading. I will provide a list of 6 venues for you to consider, in the chronological order.

1. Tao's load forecasting courses (May 27-29, 2015, New York, NY)

I have taught the fundamental course 15 times. More than 150 energy forecasters have attended the course. (See some statistics based on the first 10 offerings) Recently I have developed a one-day advanced level course for those who want some in depth coverage of the subject and hands on experience of SAS. The links to the courses are listed below:

• Electric Load Forecasting: Fundamentals and Best Practices
• Electric Load Forecasting: Advanced Topics and Case Studies

2. 35th International Symposium on Forecasting (ISF2015, June 21-24, 2015, Riverside, CA)

ISF2015 is a great conference if you want to learn the frontiers of forecasting. I'm organizing an energy forecasting session at ISF2015. The two sessions includes six talks with a balanced mix of state-of-the-art research and practice.

Session Title: Frontiers in Electricity Demand Forecasting I: The State of The Practice
Chair: Tao Hong (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)

• SAS Energy Forecasting: Hourly load forecasting for all horizons
• Bradley Lawson (SAS, USA)
• Combining sister load forecasts
• Tao Hong (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
• Bidong Liu (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
• MEFM: An R package for long-term probabilistic forecasting of electricity demand
• Rob J. Hyndman (Monash University, Australia)

Session Title: Frontiers in Electricity Demand Forecasting II: Probabilistic Electric Load Forecasting
Chair: Tao Hong (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)

• Quantile regression algorithms for forecasting uncertainty in electricity smart meters data
• Souhaib Ben Taieb, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia.
• Rob J. Hyndman, Monash University, Australia
• Marc G. Genton, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia.
• Electricity demand interval forecasting with Quantile Regression Averaging
• Jakub Notowarski (Wrocław University of Technology, Poland)
• The myths of residual simulation for probabilistic load forecasting 
• Jingrui Xie (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)

3. 3rd International Conference Energy & Meteorology (ICEM2015, June 22-26, 2015, Denver, CO)

Weather drives electricity demand and wind/solar power generation. The conference has a unique focus on the interdisciplinary field of energy and meteorology. For more information, please read Make a Difference in the Energy & Meteorology World written by the guest blogger and conference chair Alberto Troccoli.

4. Modern Electric Power Systems Conference 2015 (MEPS2015, July 6-9, 2015, Wroclaw, Poland)

If you are in the area of load and price forecasting, you must be familiar with Rafal Weron and his book "Modeling and Forecasting Electricity Loads and Prices: A Statistical Approach" and the recent IJF open access paper "Electricity Price Forecasting: A Review of the State-of-the-art with a Look into the Future". Rafal is based in Wroclaw, Poland. He is also a key player on the organizing committee of MEPS2015. I'm sure he will present some nice forecasting work at the conference.

5. IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting 2015 (PESGM2015, July 26-30, 2015, Denver, CO)

We have organized two days of agenda on energy forecasting. A full-day tutorial on "Energy Forecasting in the Smart Grid Era", and a full-day session of GEFCom2014 finalist presentations. I will write another blog post when the schedule is finalized.

6. AEIC/WLRA annual conference (time & location TBD)

This is a joint conference organized by AEIC Load Research Committee and Western Load Research Association. The two groups used to organize conferences separately. Last year was the first time they held a joint conference. I hope they will continue the joint conference this fall.

Mark your calendar and enjoy the trips!

NPower Forecasting Challenge 2015

Apparently after two big runs of the Global Energy Forecasting Competitions, power companies are getting more interested than before in taking the competition approach to making their business decisions. I'm very glad to see things going toward this direction. As I said in Three Worst Marketing Buzzwords for Forecasting Solutions about forecasting accuracy,

Before doing a pilot, nobody can claim the superior accuracy. Even after the pilot, we cannot guarantee the consistent superiority in the future. Nevertheless, a well-designed pilot can offer customers a comprehensive view of the performance of competing solutions.

This time it's about hiring summer interns. The message below is from NPower:

We have a launched a forecasting challenge to help attract students to our graduate programme, however we are also excepting entries from others - who just want to test themselves on some real industry data, they won't be eligible for the cash prize but will be able to see their performance on the leaderboard.
From the T&C's:
"Please note this competition is for University students only (see terms & conditions). However if you would still be interested in attempting the challenge please email graduates@RWEnpower.com. You will not be eligible for the prize but your forecast will be scored and appear in our rankings."
Here is the landing page and also a blog entry on the R site - entries close on Feb 13 with the competition kicking off on Feb 16.

BTW, I did not participate in the design or operations of this challenge, so send all your questions to Npower. 

Have fun!

BigDEAL Students Winning Poster Contest of Analytics2014

I'm fortunate to be the father of two adorable kids, Leo and Angela. I remember their first cry, first smile, first "ba-ba" (means Daddy in Chinese) and first crawl. Since my wife has told me many times "no more kids", I guess I have to live with only two kids.

Last month, my first PhD student, Bidong Liu, forwarded me an email from the conference chair of Analytics2014, saying that his poster had won the poster contest of Analytics2014. As a winner, Bidong was invited to Las Vegas to present the work "how does temperature affect electricity demand" with the trip covered by the conference. To make the deal even sweeter, I also sent him to the post conference training "Forecasting Using SAS Software: a Programming Approach" taught by Dr. David Dickey.

Bidong Liu @Analytics2014

While Bidong is the lucky guy getting the treat, the poster is the result of teamwork of several engineering students. The second author is Jiali Liu, another BigDEAL student. She is getting her Master of Science degree in Engineering Management next semester. Her thesis topic is on combining load forecasts. If you are trying to fill your analyst position(s), I highly recommend that you check out her profile.

Now I realize that I have more than two kids: the BigDEAL students are bringing me the joyful moments too, after they have survived through all the tough days under my supervision of course.

Thank you BigDEAL students, and congratulations Bidong!

Tao's Recommended SAS Courses for Energy Forecasters

Mastering advanced forecasting tools is one of the Three Skills of the Ideal Energy Forecaster. Most, if not all of my clients are using or going to use SAS for load analysis, load research and load forecasting. In my previous consulting jobs, I sometimes recommended learning path customized for a client based on his/her background. Below is my recommended list of SAS courses in chronological order for an entry level energy/utility analyst, assuming that the person has no experience with SAS or statistical forecasting. The numbers in the brackets indicate the amount of time (in hours) to learn the subjects.

An Enjoyable Journey with 100+ Forecasters

The next offering of my load forecasting courses is scheduled on March 9-11, 2016 in Charlotte. Registration is open here: https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?id=1326

Among all the professional commitments, I love teaching the most. I teach all over the places, from industry trainings to university lectures, from conference workshops to private onsite classes. This blog post is about an enjoyable journey of teaching my course, "Electric Load Forecasting: Fundamentals and Best Practices" over the last year.

1. An idea

After working on load forecasting projects for several years with many utilities, I realized that I had never got a comprehensive, formal and rigorous classroom training on this subject.