Last month, Itron hosted its 15th annual ISO Forecasting Summit from Sept. 23-25, 2024, in Seattle, Washington. With 42 customers from 11 Independent System Operators (ISOs) from the U.S., Canada and Australia, this meeting was one of the most highly attended ISO Summits with half of the participants as first-time attendees. 

The ISO Forecasting Summit provides a unique opportunity for ISOs to meet annually to discuss the latest short- and long-term forecasting challenges and solutions in an open and collegial environment. This year’s sessions included over a dozen customer presentations, plus multiple Itron-led sessions, covering paramount topics in the industry: electric vehicles (EVs), battery storage, and behind-the-meter (BTM) solar generation.  

Because of the annual summit’s singular position in the industry, many attendees have developed collaborative partnerships between their organizations. In particular, the California ISO (CAISO) and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) have collaborated on common issues – initially on how to account for increasing solar generation in the forecast and evolving more recently to include other distributed energy resources (DERs) and new modeling methodology solutions to address load variability driven by rooftop photovoltaics (PV). 

All of this year’s attendees utilize Itron’s forecasting software and services to varying degrees. In fact, the majority depend daily upon Itron’s demand-forecasting system MetrixIDR to support their real-time and day-ahead markets. Still, ISOs without existing relationships with Itron have attended in prior years. We always encourage new attendees. Contact us at forecasting@itron.com if you are interested in joining the conversation in a future ISO Forecasting Summit.