Forecasting
Improving Efficiency and Accuracy with Forecasting in the Cloud
November 20, 2019
In today’s increasingly dynamic energy market, it is important for utilities to have access to accurate and timely energy forecasts. Whether forecasts are for five minutes or for several months ahead, it is critical for utilities to be able to anticipate grid operations.
Recently, Itron deployed its Forecast-as-a-Service (FaaS) offering for Energy New England (ENE), which provides a range of support services for over 24 New England municipal electric utilities that serve a combined peak demand of more than 1,200 MW. ENE utilizes Itron’s solution to reduce the time and effort required to generate load forecasts and to account for solar generation.
Based in Mansfield, Massachusetts, ENE has collaborated with Itron for nearly 20 years with overwhelming success. To meet its growing and diverse customer portfolio and the penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar, energy storage, and electric vehicle programs, the utility turned to Itron to make daily forecasting simpler. With Itron managing forecasts through its cloud-based solution, ENE has dramatically reduced the time spent generating forecasts and integrating DERs.
The Itron team of experienced consultants maintains and monitors the system’s operation, forecasts and statistical models. We are also responsible for delivering the forecasting managed service, which is configured in a cloud-based solution running on Microsoft® Azure and directly transmits data files to ENE’s network once per day. ENE has access to an interactive web portal that allows users the ability to view, edit and export forecasts, which are updated each hour.
Itron’s services and support have allowed ENE to free staff up to perform other tasks by cutting the time needed to generate accurate forecasts. The solution has also equipped ENE to incorporate new municipal customers quickly, giving them a higher level of service and control.
Watch a short demo and let us help you implement FaaS at your organization at www.itron.com/forecasting.