Using SAS Analytics for utilities, Southern California Edison (SCE) has begun improving its forecasting efficiency by integrating and analyzing vast stores of data in its energy forecasting platform.
Today SCE — an electric utilities, with nearly 5 million customers — is strengthening energy operations and preparing to address new smart grid challenges and opportunities.
With the increase of wind and solar energy resources and a high penetration of smart meters in the California market, the business of energy forecasting is increasingly complex. The short-term load forecasting team at SCE creates a larger number and greater variety of forecasts than ever before. However, gathering quality data for analysis is no longer labor-intensive.
With SAS, SCE integrates data from a wide variety of sources and extracts crucial insights for decision-making. Model development, data analysis, reporting and visualization are now all accomplished in a single integrated software platform, streamlining the load and price forecasting process.
With millions of smart meters poised to usher in big data, the forecasting team will gain access to smart grid analysis in 2013. Terabytes of detailed customer data will help the utility further improve short-term forecasts.
