E&E News by POLITICO: Can electricity forecasts be trusted in the age of AI?

And the consequences of poor forecasting would be “disastrous,” said Karen Onaran, CEO of the Electricity Consumers Resource Council, which represents large industrial users.

“If we underinvest, we’re going to have blackouts. We’re not going to stay above the competitive edge in this country if we can’t support data centers [and] manufacturing,” Onaran said. “If we overestimate, then we’re building a lot that’s not going to show up, and then who gets stuck paying for all that?” she said. “Residential customers that can ill afford these significant rate hikes.”

Absent rigorous data, transmission providers have taken different approaches to accounting for the data center boom. Most, including PJM, lean on their member utilities.
“We depend on the local utilities to best determine which projects are most likely to materialize, based either on historical patterns or some screening criteria,” Shields with PJM said. “PJM then conducts additional discussions with utilities to further understand and make determinations as to what to include in our forecasts.”

But Onaran with the Electricity Consumers Resource Council says the finer details of such methodologies are often opaque. “You don’t want to give away too many secrets and you want to be a little cagey because of competitiveness,” she said.