Production and Consumption Forecasting: A Buying Checklist
Evaluate forecast horizon, actuals, operational exceptions and AI model improvement together.
Evaluate forecast horizon, actuals, operational exceptions and AI model improvement together.
Match the forecast to the decision
Specify whether the forecast supports next-day planning, intraday operation or a longer consumption budget. Confirm issue times, update frequency, data latency and the available weather and plant-state inputs.
Compare forecasts with actuals fairly
Retain the forecast issued before each delivery period. Compare it with actual values using a defined error metric and segment results by horizon, weather, curtailment and outages. Near-zero production needs care when using percentage errors.
Make model improvement traceable
Ask for versioned forecast records, a comparison against a simple baseline and a review of performance over representative periods. Model changes should be evaluated on later observations, with the operating exceptions visible in the report.