User:Vipul/Global Energy Forecasting Competition

The Global Energy Forecasting Competition (GEFCom) is a competition conducted by a team led by Dr. Tao Hong that invites submissions around the world for forecasting energy demand. GEFCom was first held in 2012 in collaboration with Kaggle, and the second GEFCom is scheduled for 2014 and accepting submissions.

GEFCom 2012
GEFCom 2012 was organized by a team comprising Dr. Tao Hong (Chair), Dr. Shu Fang (Vice Chair, Load Forecasting), and Dr. Pierre Pinson (Vice Chair, Wind Forecasting). The sponsors included the International Journal of Forecasting, various IEEE Working Groups, WeatherBank Inc, and Kaggle. The competition was hosted on Kaggle, a service that runs data science competitions. It included two tracks: a hierarchical load forecasting track and a wind energy forecasting track, and both tracks opened to contestants in September 2012. The results were announced by the IEEE Power & Energy Society (one of the sponsors of the competition) on September 30, 2013.

The organizers of the competition described the results in an article in the April-June 2014 issue of the International Journal of Forecasting. Papers by the top performers in the competition describing their methods appeared in the same issue of the journal.

According to competition Chair Dr. Tao Hong, GEFCom2012 had five main aims:


 * 1) Improve the forecasting practices of the utility industry
 * 2) Bring together state-of-the-art techniques for energy forecasting
 * 3) Bridge the gap between academic research and industry practice
 * 4) Promote analytics in power and energy education
 * 5) Prepare the industry to overcome the forecasting challenges brought by the smart grid technologies and renewable integration needs.

GEFCom 2014
GEFCom2014 was announced by Dr. Tao Hong in an article for The Oracle, a publication of the International Institute of Forecasters. The competition is scheduled to begin on August 15, 2014 and end on December 15, 2014. In addition to individual prizes, GEFCom2014 also features institute prizes for institutes with multiple well-performing teams. The best performers on the competition will be invited to submit papers for a special issue of the International Journal of Forecasting on probabilistic energy forecasting. According to the website, GEFCom2014 will have additional tracks in 2014: in addition to the hierarchical load forecasting and wind energy forecasting tracks, there will be a price forecasting track and solar energy forecasting track. The IEEE Power & Energy Society will be one of the sponsors of the competition.