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Seattle, Washington

Forecasting

Itron's 2024 ISO Forecasting Summit

October 24, 2024

Last month, Itron hosted its 15th annual ISO Forecasting Summit from Sept. 23-25, 2024, in Seattle, Washington. With 42 customers from 11 Independent System Operators (ISOs) from the U.S., Canada and Australia, this meeting was one of the most highly attended ISO Summits with half of the participants as first-time attendees. 

The ISO Forecasting Summit provides a unique opportunity for ISOs to meet annually to discuss the latest short- and long-term forecasting challenges and solutions in an open and collegial environment. This year’s sessions included over a dozen customer presentations, plus multiple Itron-led sessions, covering paramount topics in the industry: electric vehicles (EVs), battery storage, and behind-the-meter (BTM) solar generation.  

Because of the annual summit’s singular position in the industry, many attendees have developed collaborative partnerships between their organizations. In particular, the California ISO (CAISO) and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) have collaborated on common issues – initially on how to account for increasing solar generation in the forecast and evolving more recently to include other distributed energy resources (DERs) and new modeling methodology solutions to address load variability driven by rooftop photovoltaics (PV). 

All of this year’s attendees utilize Itron’s forecasting software and services to varying degrees. In fact, the majority depend daily upon Itron’s demand-forecasting system MetrixIDR to support their real-time and day-ahead markets. Still, ISOs without existing relationships with Itron have attended in prior years. We always encourage new attendees. Contact us at forecasting@itron.com if you are interested in joining the conversation in a future ISO Forecasting Summit. 

By Rich Simons

Principal Forecast Consultant

Since joining Itron in 2000, Mr. Simons has developed, implemented and supported numerous day-ahead and real-time forecasting systems for Independent System Operators (ISOs), retailers, distribution companies, cooperatives and wholesale generators, including NYISO, IESO, TVA, Consolidated Edison, NRG Energy, PSEG and Vectren. Mr. Simons has implemented systems to support budget & long-term forecasting, weather-normalization, and unbilled-energy estimation for municipal utilities, electric cooperatives and investor-owned utilities, including Ameren, Entergy and FirstEnergy. Mr. Simons has developed forecasting and analysis solutions for municipal water utilities and has developed several customized applications and models for forecasting revenues, managing bills, weather-normalizing sales and estimating unbilled energy. Mr. Simons has reconfigured, streamlined and deployed load research systems at multiple utilities including United Illuminating, Indianapolis Power & Light, TECO Energy, NVEnergy, Colorado Springs Utilities and Lincoln Electric. Mr. Simons has implemented real-time natural gas forecasting systems to support operations at Vectren Energy and Consolidated Edison. In 2019 and 2020, Mr. Simons was a key team-member on a well-publicized report for NYISO to analyze long-term weather trends across the New York state.