2020. If we all knew in advance what the year would have looked like we all might have canceled the entire year from our calendar. As of this writing, Covid-19 continues to dominate the news cycle and garner global attention we all try to navigate the pandemic. The World Bank reports that the global economy is down by more than 5 percent. Life, as we knew it, seems to have taken a very long pause.

But not all is dire news. We have seen resiliency in people, systems and culture. We have seen humanity rise to meet the challenges time and time again. And while it is pretty weird, we have been able to watch sports and listen to live music in new ways that were unimaginable just a few months ago…piped in crowd noise for football and baseball games? Of course! Drive-in concerts? Well, why not?
 

One of the points of light of resiliency has been the utility industry. Every bit of good news that is helping keep people alive and economies afloat all have the underpinning of an energy infrastructure that did not fail to accomplish its mission through operating conditions that seem like they were dreamed up by a creative movie producer in Hollywood. Here are some examples of positive stories related to our industry:

• One utility that we spoke with created two completely separate control centers in a matter of days at the outbreak of the pandemic, the goal being, to keep staff working in “pods,” where contact with others could be controlled.
   
• A utility’s credit and collection function had to be re-worked to account for large segments of their customer base losing their jobs. The trick here was, not only did the utility demonstrate flexibility for customers facing hardship but also in designing programs that enabled customers to recover while keeping the utility solvent.
   
• Utilities also had to rethink how to manage work crews working in the field during a pandemic. Interacting with other crews and customers could be perceived as being a form of “super spreader” events.

Nowhere have utilities had to innovate processes more than in the forecasting functions. With traditional fundamentals of the load forecasting suddenly becoming stale, due to the pandemic and restrictions mandated by the local authorities, utility leaders had to learn how they could still have some predictability to their load forecasts. Too many misses for too many time periods would cost the utility millions of dollars in an environment that is already financially constrained.

At Ameren, the load forecasting and analysis group also had to change the fundamentals of the load analysis process. Explaining the impact of COVID-19 on sales was as challenging as forecasting for the balance of the year or next year. Traditional statistical models were augmented by a mix of weekly unemployment rate, Google mobility indices, and COVID-19 infection rate in the service territory were consulted to determine the impact of COVID on sales and margin. Additionally, the forecasting group developed projections for COVID-19 infection rate which, in conjunction with traditional variables, were used in forecasting sales for the upcoming months.

Changes made in the traditional models helped Ameren improve its reporting of sales for financial closing. For example, inclusion of Google mobility indices and COVID-19 variables in statistical models improved overall estimates by as much as approximately 5 percent for certain months in 2020. Such a difference in overall estimates could have incorrectly translated into misleading class-level reported sales in the financial books. This is because class-level regression models built using the traditional method only include load trends, seasonality and weather information as driver variables, but sales during the COVID-19 era are also driven by factors such as mandates by local authorities, and office closure, etc. Inclusion of these newer information sources in the models helps in better financial reporting.

With 2020 behind us, there is reason for optimism. Vaccine deliveries were in place by the end of the year with upwards of 100 million vaccines planned by the end of March 2021 in the U.S. alone. Businesses and governments continue to show resiliency and creativity in holding their economies together while taking on the challenges of the pandemic. And utilities have kept the lights on while continuing to deliver reliable, safe, affordable, and sustainable electricity through conditions that were unimaginable just a few months ago. Here’s to 2021!