GridCast v1.5 in production

Steadier forecasts, built on fundamentals that can see the peak coming

v1.5 is live in production. Every model is now less easily misled by a handful of unusual hours, and on 28 October our net load forecast called the German peak a day ahead.

Seeing the peak coming

German net load climbed from below zero on Monday morning to close to 50 GW by Wednesday morning, and day-ahead prices rose with it. On Wednesday at 11:00, before gate closure, GridCast forecast that net load would pass 60 GW late on Thursday afternoon. The auction then cleared at 574 €/MWh for 17:15 Thursday, at that peak.

Net load has always been one of the biggest drivers of German prices, which is why our price models are built on our own load, wind and solar forecasts.

Forecasts that need more evidence to move

On 9 October, our German wind forecast dropped by 9 GW for two hours. The model had learned a pattern from a handful of unusual hours and applied it to conditions where it didn’t hold.

v1.5 sets a higher bar before a model learns a pattern like that, so a few unusual hours are no longer enough on their own. It applies to all signals, not only wind, and accuracy holds steady or improves for most of them.

Also new

Market data now reaches our models earlier. The 11:00 run of our day-ahead forecasts already includes the latest market expectations and is available in the API shortly after, which leaves more time to adjust positions before gate closure.