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Council regional load forecast, 2021 Northwest Power Plan

Each run's annual system load with losses, net of cogeneration, for the region, at the generator busbar, in aMW (this atlas's MWa; All Total Energy Table!G3), as the 2021 Plan's model printed it (runs dated 2020-08-12). A price-effect forecast: it reflects customers' choices 'without any new conservation initiatives', with 'expected savings from existing and approved codes and standards' incorporated (the Council's forecasting methodology page). Each run carries one climate model's temperatures for the year and the plan's indirect climate impacts (plan pages 17-20). It is not a forecast of metered load.

Issuer: Northwest Power and Conservation Council ↗ · Geography: The Council's region as the 2021 Plan's demand workbook names it, 'Northwest' (All Total Energy Table!G3), with state sales series for Idaho, Montana ('Western Montana' in its graph labels), Oregon and Washington. The plan has no balancing-authority areas.

Why this forecast, and the rules

The Council's plan before the Ninth, and the one whose target years have passed. The nine runs shown are the plan's forecast: their 2041 values are the ends of the range of energy needs the plan prints (document 2022-3, page 24), and the workbook's own graph data are drawn from exactly these nine rows (All Total Energy Table rows 50-52 over rows 10-18). The plan names none of them the expected case, so all nine are shown under the Council's labels and none is picked. The workbook's other thirty runs are sensitivities, named by family and carrying no values here.

  • draft final: A draft and a final edition are separate vintages with their own issue dates; a zero revision between them is recorded, not dropped.
  • outcomes: An observed value sits beside a forecast only where the two share a basis; otherwise it is published on its own basis with the reason and no difference. A difference between a comparable outcome and a forecast carries weather as well as forecast error.
  • revision: A later vintage's value minus an earlier vintage's, for the same scenario, geography, metric, unit and target year, is a revision of what the issuer expected. It is not a measured change in electricity use, and it is never computed across scenarios, geographies, metrics or units.
  • scenarios: Every scenario the document labels is listed under the issuer's own label. A scenario the document draws but prints no value for is an explicit absence (chart_only), never filled from the chart.
  • units: MWa is annual average energy, MW is a peak, MWh is energy over a period. None is converted to another on a fact; an annual MWa derived from MWh uses that year's hours.
  • withdrawn: A withdrawn expectation stays in the ledger flagged with its reason; it is excluded from revisions and never deleted.

Editions

1 vintage
  • 2021 Northwest Power Plan (Council document 2022-3), demand forecast workbook finalcover date of the plan, Council document 2022-3 (March 10, 2022); the workbook's plan runs are dated 2020-08-12 and the file was last modified 2022-03-02
    2022-03-10Document ↗

Filed once, in the 2022-03-10 edition

Modeled no earlier edition to revise from
Annual energy, MWa. Each row is this edition's own alternative, filed the same day.
Scenario2022202320242025
Climate1_XGO_Base_NoFreeze (GCM1_Base)22,07821,93621,95822,067
Climate1_XGO_High_NoFreeze (GCM1_High)22,68322,66122,84823,092
Climate1_XGO_Low_NoFreeze (GCM1_Low)21,34821,09220,99520,981
Climate2_XGO_Base_NoFreeze (GCM 2_Base)21,66821,77022,03421,694
Climate2_XGO_High_NoFreeze (GCM 2_High)22,27022,49422,92322,717
Climate2_XGO_Low_NoFreeze (GCM 2_Low)20,94120,92721,07120,610
Climate3_XGO_Base_NoFreeze (GCM 3_Base)22,11321,96621,78421,598
Climate3_XGO_High_NoFreeze (GCM 3_High)22,71622,69222,67122,618
Climate3_XGO_Low_NoFreeze (GCM 3_Low)21,38521,12220,82420,518

Every run the edition prints, by the issuer's own family

39 runs

A family marked shown carries its values above, every run of it; the others are named here so that no run is left out silently, and carry no values.

  • Loads with Direct and Indirect Climate Change Impact (All Total Energy Table!BU9); 'Price_Effect With Climate Change' (Sector Level AAGR!C11)9 runs: Climate1_XGO_Base_NoFreeze (GCM1_Base); Climate1_XGO_Low_NoFreeze (GCM1_Low); Climate1_XGO_High_NoFreeze (GCM1_High); Climate2_XGO_Base_NoFreeze (GCM 2_Base); Climate2_XGO_Low_NoFreeze (GCM 2_Low); Climate2_XGO_High_NoFreeze (GCM 2_High); Climate3_XGO_Base_NoFreeze (GCM 3_Base); Climate3_XGO_Low_NoFreeze (GCM 3_Low); Climate3_XGO_High_NoFreeze (GCM 3_High)Not comparable with observed load: The plan's forecast, shown in full above: the nine runs whose 2041 values are the ends of the range the plan prints. Not comparable with observed load on the six bases stated there.All Total Energy Table rows 10-18 (run names in column A, labels BU10:BU18); the range of energy needs in 2041, document 2022-3 page 24 · Source ↗
    Shown
  • 'With Climate Change and Frozen Efficiency' (Sector Level AAGR!C22); run labels ending _FE (All Total Energy Table!BU19:BU27)9 runs: Climate1_XGO_Base_Freeze (GCM1_Base_FE); Climate1_XGO_Low_Freeze (GCM1_Low_FE); Climate1_XGO_High_Freeze (GCM1_High_FE); Climate2_XGO_Base_Freeze (GCM 2_Base_FE); Climate2_XGO_Low_Freeze (GCM 2_Low_FE); Climate2_XGO_High_Freeze (GCM 2_High_FE); Climate3_XGO_Base_Freeze (GCM 3_Base_FE); Climate3_XGO_Low_Freeze (GCM 3_Low_FE); Climate3_XGO_High_Freeze (GCM 3_High_FE)Not comparable with observed load: Frozen efficiency holds efficiency 'as of the base year of the plan' and is 'the conservation supply model's starting point', which 'typically is higher than the price-effect forecast' (the Council's forecasting methodology page): not the plan's expectation. The six bases stated for observed regional load apply as well.All Total Energy Table rows 19-27 · Source ↗
    Named only
  • Loads without Climate Change (All Total Energy Table!BU5); 'Price-Effect' (Sector Level AAGR!C6)3 runs: BaseCase (Base Economic Growth); LowCaseScenario (Low Economic Growth); HighCaseScenario (High Economic Growth)Not comparable with observed load: The plan's forecast 'includes the impact of climate-change-based temperatures' (the Council's energy-use forecast page); these runs do not, and the workbook states their weather only as 'without Climate Change'. The six bases stated for observed regional load apply as well.All Total Energy Table rows 6-8 (labels BU6:BU8); runs dated 2020-07-30 · Source ↗
    Named only
  • Loads without Indirect Climate Change Impact (All Total Energy Table!BU28)18 runs: Climate1_NoXGO_Base_NoFreeze (Climate1_without secondary Impact_Base); Climate1_NoXGO_Low_NoFreeze (Climate1_without secondary Impact_Low); Climate1_NoXGO_High_NoFreeze (Climate1_without secondary Impact_High); Climate2_NoXGO_Base_NoFreeze (Climate2_without secondary Impact_Base); Climate2_NoXGO_Low_NoFreeze (Climate2_without secondary Impact_Low); Climate2_NoXGO_High_NoFreeze (Climate2_without secondary Impact_High); Climate3_NoXGO_Base_NoFreeze (Climate3_without secondary Impact_Base); Climate3_NoXGO_Low_NoFreeze (Climate3_without secondary Impact_Low); Climate3_NoXGO_High_NoFreeze (Climate3_without secondary Impact_High); Climate1_NoXGO_Base_Freeze (Climate1_without secondary Impact_Base_Freeze); Climate1_NoXGO_Low_Freeze (Climate1_without secondary Impact_Low_Freeze); Climate1_NoXGO_High_Freeze (Climate1_without secondary Impact_High_Freeze); Climate2_NoXGO_Base_Freeze (Climate2_without secondary Impact_Base_Freeze); Climate2_NoXGO_Low_Freeze (Climate2_without secondary Impact_Low_Freeze); Climate2_NoXGO_High_Freeze (Climate2_without secondary Impact_High_Freeze); Climate3_NoXGO_Base_Freeze (Climate3_without secondary Impact_Base_Freeze); Climate3_NoXGO_Low_Freeze (Climate3_without secondary Impact_Low_Freeze); Climate3_NoXGO_High_Freeze (Climate3_without secondary Impact_High_Freeze)Not comparable with observed load: Sensitivities without the plan's indirect climate impacts, the climate-migration and air-conditioning adjustments of plan pages 17-20; the workbook's own block 'Delta in Load due to Secondary Impacts' (BU48) states that gap. Not the plan's range; nine of them also carry the frozen-efficiency suffix. The six bases stated for observed regional load apply as well.All Total Energy Table rows 29-46 (labels BU29:BU46) · Source ↗
    Named only

What was later observed

Each entry is on its own stated basis. A difference appears only where the entry is comparable; one that is not comparable carries the reason and no difference.

  • 2022–2025 · Observed regional load: EIA-930 demand summed over the 13 balancing authorities the draft Ninth Plan's Appendix F names (Table F-5, PDF page 8), with PACE and NWMT cut to the in-region shares it states (PDF page 7) (MWa)The choice of EIA-930 demand column (EIA's adjusted series or the reported one) is still open, so no regional value is computed; the plan's values are published without it.Not comparable: Six bases separate every run from observed load, each as large as the gaps, so no difference is computed. Conservation: the forecast 'does not take into account expected load reductions due to new conservation measures' (energy-use forecast page), while the Regional Technical Forum reports 465 aMW saved in the plan period through 2024, including codes and standards the forecast already counts in part, and no source splits the two. Weather: each run carries one climate model's temperatures for the year; observed years carry their actual weather, and no weather-normalized regional load for 2022-2025 was found. History: the forecast's own history is busbar load net of cogeneration, a different quantity from the balancing-authority load the Council later plots, and cannot be converted to it. Vintage: the runs date from July and August 2020 and the plan was published 2022-03-10, after 2022 had begun. Quantity and geography: busbar load for the four-state region against balancing-authority demand on a zone list the Council drew up for the Ninth Plan. Observed series: EIA-930 demand over those zones does not reproduce the Council's plotted history, and choosing one series over the other can alone change the sign of a year's gap.The atlas's own derivation, never the Council's history: it does not reproduce the annual energy the Council plots for 2022-2024 (Appendix F, Figure F-4), cause unresolved.
    Not yet includedSource ↗

Curation and sources

Release 20260929T050546Z-51ae0f7d3c78