Forecasting

12th Annual Energy Forecasting Meeting

April 21, 2014

It’s been a couple weeks since the 12th Annual Energy Forecasting Meeting taking place April 2-3, 2014.

As I reflect on the two days spent discussing energy trends, weather normalization, and forecasting challenges, I realize how quickly memories are pushed into the recesses of my mind in the face of life’s busyness and new challenges. To counteract this effect, I find that recalling meeting highlights keeps the material fresh.

When David Simons walked by my office this morning, I asked him what his meeting highlights were. You’ll remember David as one of our bright young analysts who gave the presentation on quantile regression. He mentioned the following:

I enjoyed how Martin Holdrich demonstrated the impact of age groups on the economy. There’s nothing like data to reinforce intuition. This is clearly something we need to consider in the forecasting process.
Jeff Johnson’s presentation on long-term weather drivers was a great way to understand weather trends and their uncertainty. Coupled with the other weather normal presentations and the round table discussion, weather normalization is clearly a challenge—especially in the face of this cold winter.
I don’t know if anyone views light bulbs like Stuart McMenamin does. But, the price point, payback, and quality of light argue that LEDs are here to stay.
I found Abdul Razack’s “thinking outside the box” approach to visualizing data very refreshing. It was great to see the multitude of ways we can depict data to help us seek out and understand relationships among variables.
And, who didn’t like, or need, Sunny Grigorova’s demonstration of simple stretches and exercises in the afternoon. That session was a great reminder of the importance of moving our bodies to improve our health and wellness while we’re in the workplace.

Each of David’s observations brought me back to Las Vegas and dredged up vivid pictures from each presentation.