Dr. Monforte’s Retirement Brown Bag: The Past, Present and Future of Operational Load Forecasting

I have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Frank A. Monforte for over 33 years. He was instrumental in starting and sustaining Itron's successful forecasting brown bag webinars. We have conducteding these free, educational webinars since 2006! During the last 18 years, Itron has hosted 100 webinars. If you're a forecaster, I'm sure you've run across one or more of the many brown bags, articles or white papers that Dr. Monforte has presented and authored-and this is one you won't want to miss! Join our 101st special brown bag webinar on Tuesday, Dec. 10 at noon Pacific to wrap up 2024 and celebrate Frank's retirement. He will discuss the past, current and future of operational load forecasting.

Over the past 45 years, Dr. Monforte has experienced advances in computing power from HP calculators to today's mass computing data centers. Despite the lighting fast evolution of computing power and its promise of untethered computer intelligence, the "art" of operational load forecasting remains in the hands of a small cadre of talented professionals. To understand the daunting task that lies ahead, it is important to understand the path that has led us to today. The power industry faces a "fork in the road" as mass deployment of unmetered generation, storage and load control obscures true demand for power resulting in a chaotic measurement of load. The way forward depends on whether operational load forecasters can accurately account for behind-the-meter activity. If not, then traditional operational load forecast models and methods that were developed based on a deep understanding of the factors that drive demand for power will start to fail and the industry will be forced to adapt to load forecasts that are increasingly fraught with error. The alternative fork embraces the increasing load volatility leading to system operations and operational forecasting frameworks that work within the bounds of an ever-widening chaotic load series.

If you registered for any of the 2024 Itron Forecasting brown bags, you will automatically receive the log in instructions for this presentation. If you haven't, register today.

View the schedule for all upcoming forecasting workshops, meetings, and free brown bag sessions at www.itron.com/forecastingworkshops.