Ever since the 1950s when the wide spread adoption of residential and commercial air conditioning began to drive peak system demand, electric utilities have recognized that good weather forecasts are essential to good load forecasts. Good load forecasts, in turn, are needed for efficient dispatch and proper system operation. This connection between efficient, reliable operations and weather forecasts, important today, will be even more crucial in the future. So crucial that the monitoring, modeling and predicting of weather conditions will become an integral part of future utility operations at all levels. What would drive utilities to become so heavily involved in the science of weather? The answer lies partly in the increasing number of electric utility operations that will be heavily tied to weather in one form or another.
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