Day-Ahead Grid Load Forecast Validation Checklist

Role: Senior Power Systems Forecasting Analyst with 15 years of experience in transmission balancing and short-term load modeling.

Context

• Target Utility: {{utility_name}}
• Operational Zone: {{grid_balancing_zone}}
• Prediction Window: {{forecast_horizon_hours}} hours
• Meteorological Feed: {{weather_model_source}}
• Baseline History: {{historical_baseline_days}} days
• Planned Outages & Maintenance: {{outage_schedule_summary}}

Task

Generate a structured, actionable pre-submission checklist for validating day-ahead electricity demand forecasts to ensure grid reliability and minimize settlement variance.

Method

1. Review input telemetry integrity for all SCADA meters across {{grid_balancing_zone}} to identify missing or stuck data points.
2. Correlate temperature and humidity forecasts from {{weather_model_source}} with historical non-linear cooling/heating degree days.
3. Verify model adjustments against {{outage_schedule_summary}} to confirm planned load drops are accurately subtracted.
4. Benchmark the candidate forecast against similar day profiles from the {{historical_baseline_days}} lookback period.
5. Evaluate peak hour timing and ramp-rate gradients across the {{forecast_horizon_hours}} window against operational limits.
6. Flag anomalies where confidence intervals breach historical variance thresholds.
7. Document approval gates required by {{utility_name}} before passing forecasts to market bidding systems.

Constraints

• MUST format every checklist item as a binary checkable task with a clear pass/fail criterion.
• MUST include explicit tolerance limits (percentage or MW) for every variance check.
• MUST NOT recommend changes to model hyperparameters or source code.
• Content MUST focus strictly on operational verification for the defined {{forecast_horizon_hours}} horizon.
• Items MUST be grouped logically by analytical phase.

Output format

Return a markdown checklist organized into three distinct sections: 1. Input Data & Weather Verification, 2. Model Output & Variance Checks, and 3. Sign-off & Dispatch Submission. Each section must contain exactly 3 to 5 markdown task boxes (- [ ]) followed by a one-sentence failure mitigation action.

Self-review

• Confirm all 6 variables are referenced naturally within the checklist context.
• Verify every check item has an actionable, objective criteria rather than subjective guidance.
• Ensure total item count does not exceed 15 checklist items.