Ventyx’s utility demand and price forecasting system has been selected for a NASA project targeting short-term load forecasting for energy utilities. The award was made under the NASA Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES) program. The project involves the application of weather-related earth science to optimize accuracy of Ventyx’s ‘Nostradamus’ short-term forecasts.
Neural net
Nostradamus uses neural networks to ‘learn’ relationships among any number of data inputs to produce demand and price forecasts. The ROSES project will improve forecasts by using NASA’s high resolution data and models of air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and more obscure items such as ocean temperatures, offshore winds and snow pack levels.
Battelle
Ventyx partnered with independent R&D organization Battelle to bid on the project. Battelle’s Chris Pestak added, ‘Load forecasting systems such as Ventyx’s are powerful decision support tools for energy utilities, but we can enhance their performance even further by starting with better data.’
This article originally appeared in Oil IT Journal 2008 Issue # 5.
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