ONE-DAY AHEAD DEMAND FORECASTING IN THE UTILITY INDUSTRIES - 2 CASE-STUDIES

This paper describes two case studies of short-term demand forecasting for the utilities, water and gas, linked to earlier research in simil ar contexts. In both cases the forecast of demand has important conseq uences for the operations and control of productive capacity. It is sh own that in these two cases extrapolative methods based on the past da ta history alone are outperformed by more complex multivariate approac hes that include information on the effects of weather. The paper conc ludes with a discussion of how an organization with an important short -term forecasting problem should go about selecting an appropriate for ecasting method.