Dr. Tao Hong funds IIF "Best Energy Paper" Award

Dr. Tao Hong

IIF Tao Hong Award

Dr. Tao Hong is a friend, former SAS colleague, former SAS basketball league opponent, a major contributor to SAS Energy Forecasting software, and now Associate Professor at UNC Charlotte. When he isn't raining three-pointers on me on the basketball court, Tao is Director of the Big Data Energy Analytics Laboratory (BigDEAL) and on the Board of the International Institute of Forecasters. And he has now graciously funded a new award for the best International Journal of Forecasting paper on energy forecasting.

And The Winner Is...

Dr. Rafal Weron
Wroclaw University, Poland

At last month's International Symposium on Forecasting in Cairns, Australia, I was there to witness the first IIF Tao Hong Award, to Professor Rafal Weron of Wroclaw University for his paper:

“Electricity price forecasting: A review of the state-of-the-art with a look into the future”, IJF 30(4), 1030-1081

Per Rob Hyndman's award presentation speech:

Weron’s article is encyclopaedic. It covers the entirety of electricity price forecasting and systematizes a wide field of very disparate models, from statistical models across machine learning to agent models. However, the paper is not only a review; it also presents much needed guidelines for the rigorous use of methods, measures and tests, and it looks ahead and speculates on the directions electricity price forecasting will take in the next decade or so. The paper also has applications beyond electricity price forecasting, and is of particular interest to people in electric load forecasting and call centre forecasting.

Rob Hyndman and Rafal Weron

To read more about Professor Weron and the award, visit Rob Hyndman’s blog, Hyndsight.

Thanks to Professor Weron for this valuable paper, and to Tao Hong for his generous contribution.

Addendum: Interview with Rafal Weron on the Energy Forecasting Blog

Tao Hong's Energy Forecasting blog has a fresh interview with Professor Weron in the new post Who's Who in Energy Forecasting: Rafal Weron.