A Surrogate Weather Generator for Estimating Natural Gas Design Day Conditions

David Kaftan, George F. Corliss, Richard J. Povinelli and Ronald H. Brown
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David Kaftan: Marquette Energy Analytics, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53202, USA
George F. Corliss: Marquette Energy Analytics, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53202, USA
Richard J. Povinelli: Marquette Energy Analytics, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53202, USA
Ronald H. Brown: Marquette Energy Analytics, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53202, USA

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 21, 1-19

Abstract: Natural gas customers rely upon utilities to provide gas for heating in the coldest parts of winter. Heating capacity is expensive, so utilities and end users (represented by commissions) must agree on the coldest day on which a utility is expected to meet demand. The return period of such a day is long relative to the amount of weather data that are typically available. This paper develops a weather resampling method called the Surrogate Weather Resampler, which creates a large dataset to support analysis of extremely infrequent events. While most current methods for generating weather data are based on simulation, this method resamples the deviations from typical weather. The paper also shows how extreme temperatures are strongly correlated to the demand for natural gas. The Surrogate Weather Resampler was compared in-sample and out-of-sample to the WeaGETS weather generator using both the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test and an exceedance-based test for cold weather generation. A naïve benchmark was also examined. These methods studied weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and AccuWeather. Weather data were collected for 33 weather stations across North America, with 69 years of data from each weather station. We show that the Surrogate Weather Resampler can reproduce the cold tail of distribution better than the naïve benchmark and WeaGETS.

Keywords: weather generator; design day conditions; extreme cold temperatures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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