Aiolos Forecast Studio 12.0


Unleash the power of Performance and Innovation.
We're thrilled to present the latest major release of our software, Version 12.0, packed with an array of groundbreaking features. In the release you get higher performance through cutting-edge technologies such as Pre-Aggregations, Pre-Fetch, Continuous Forecasts and the platform change from .NET framework to .NET. There are also other fantastic new features such as Apply corrections, Time flexibility and Regulated hydro optimization. Below follows the news in abbreviated form but see also our Educandi-session on the topic. More than 1000 improvements have been made since the last version.

⭐HIGHLIGHTS ⭐

 

🚀 Pre-Aggregations: Unlock lightning-fast historical data retrieval with Pre-Aggregations!
This feature intelligently summarizes historical data for Aggregated series and stores them in temporary files, which will render a speed as fast as single historical series. It is seamlessly compliant with new imports, series tree changes, manual changes to historical data for child nodes, etc. The feature needs to be activated in System settings to be used.

🚀 Continuous Forecasts: Experience rapid forecasting with Continuous Forecasts! By storing previous forecasts in temporary files, this feature makes a forecast as fast as a measured series to pick up. It renders new forecasts according to your sensitivity settings regarding new or changed measured data, new weather, changed model or Series settings, Calendar changes, etc. to always give you an up-to-date forecast. The feature needs to be activated in System settings to be used.

⚡ Apply corrections: Collaborate effortlessly with Apply Corrections! Store and utilize manual corrections made in different Aiolos sessions. Whether you're working with a colleague, using automatic forecasts, or revisiting previous forecast corrections, this feature has you covered. Corrections are stored instantly, providing peace of mind that your changes are securely recorded. The feature needs to be activated in System settings to be used.

🕰️ Time resolution flexibility: makes it possible to have different Time resolutions for different forecast series in the same Aiolos configuration, and is also flexible to mix time resolutions for the import, storing, forecasting and export. 

🚀 Pre-fetch: Pre-fetch accelerates your workflow by retrieving neighboring history series data when the system is idle. It ensures that the data you need is ready and waiting, making your navigation seamless and efficient.

🚀 Technical Upgrade - .NET7: We've undergone a technical transformation, switching to .NET7. This change translates to improved speed and opens doors to more functions and future developments. Brace yourself for a faster, more feature-rich experience!

🌊 Optimization planning: Empower your market bids for Regulated Hydro power with the new feature of Optimization Planning in Aiolos! Takes factors such as Reservoir boundaries, water inflow and outflow from weather, Start&Stop costs of power plant, market prices, Season planning, etc. into account.

INDATA CONTROL

  • New control, Filter out all series with Warnings in series tree
  • New Actions, Replace with previous measurement, and Replace with alternate measurement time series.
  • Performance increases, check for updates before loading, etc.
  • Disable Indata setting in LoadImport autopar for imports not needed to be available in Indata tab with flag in autopar script /disableindatacontrol:true
  • Define Day time setting with new Time of day setting in File for Delete Whole Day-action in Indata (e.g. for Gas market hours 06-06 or neighboring time zones 23-23)
  • Autofinder setting to update existing rules rather than creating new, to easily keep your rules optimized and updated.
  • New Ribbon controls for hide/view AE, AE% and Wind direction.
  • Indata can now be run for
  • Aggregated series, if “Pre-Aggregations” is activated, which lets you e.g. monitor the sum of all your sub forecasts.

HOME and VIEW

  • Apply corrections lets you store and use manual corrections made in different sessions of Aiolos. Collaborate with a colleague or continue the work from previously made forecast corrections. You can also use it to do corrections for automatic forecasts. The corrections are stored immediately when they are made, which gives you confidence that they are stored directly without any extra button click. The feature needs to be activated in System settings.

 

 

more HOME and VIEW

  • The new Days back functionality in View is quick to flip through different validation measurement data for the forecast.
  • Added possibility to show Spot price in Diagrams in Home/View
  • Filter - Show Warnings to quickly filter out warnings without unchecking series.
  • More quick choices for interpolating/aggregating time resolutions in Home diagram & grid.
  • Zip all checked series in series tree to quickly zip multiple series.
  • Improved functionality of displaying changes from
    Configlogs, which logs all setup changes made in Aiolos.
  • Fraction and Parameters box moved from View to Home to gather all Diagram quick selections to one place.
  • Improved messaging when partial period of Forecast length is outside Start/End dates.
  • Aiolab Rapid calculator now available from Right click in Series tree, to adjust forecast for a set period from a calculator look alike dialogue.
  • Hide Homelive from Home Ribbon but keep them running in background.
  • Sort and Filter improvements of GUI functions in Series tree. Filter warnings is recommended to try.
  • Setting to quickly change diagram type (Line, Bar or Area) as a User setting for all parameters of selected type, such as weather, Forecast, History, etc.
  • Add your own Forecast series unique tool tips in Home from Extra1-field in Config-Forecast series.
  • Added 3W and 5Y to quick pins of History data in Home.
  • Startup setting now available of Fraction setting.
  • Ribbon box name changed from Home live to Data selections to better reflect usage.
  • Parameters Ribbon box moved from View to Home, as it relates to Data selections settings in Home.
  • Performance increases Pre-fetch
    ·     Pre-fetch retrieves neighboring History series data when system is idle to be available when the User clicks the next or previous series (fetches the 5 closest neighbors)
  • Performance increase Data selections & Parameters
    ·     Only selected items are created in the background, so minimizing the selections makes the interface faster.  
    ·     Homelive weather is now separated from other weather and deselected by default (User setting to change User default) to increase Performance.
    ·      Fewer selected items per default (easily changed in User settings)
  • Pre-Aggregations gives lightning-fast historical data by summing historical data for Aggregated series and store them in temporary files, which will render a speed as fast as single historical series. It is compliant with new imports, series tree changes, manual changes to historical data for child nodes, etc. The feature needs to be activated in System settings.

FORECASTING

  • Success for the new centralized Vitec AI model to centrally forecast and distribute a Vitec energy forecast (used this far for Swedish non-hourly measured customers).
  • New regulated hydro-optimization with improved management of reservoir levels, avoiding flooding and low reservoir levels.
  • Implementation of ARIMA and exponential smoothing models for special series.
  • Added hardware resources to an upscaled and more robust distributed training.
  • Allowing spot price as input feature to the models for price dependent energy forecasts.
  • Models trained on using both observed weather as well as weather forecast as input features.
  • Improved calculation time performance for the forecasting process with minimizing time-consuming interaction between .Net and Python, also added logic for avoiding redundant forecasting processes.
  • Continuous forecasts. Store forecast result. Forecast after event (Weather, Measurements, Config). Ready-made on click or time.
  • Aggregated Forecast as a Model setting, to be able to use Regimes for weighting a bottom up and a top-down approach easily .
  • Azimuth and Inclination added as From/To settings for Solar power series to account plants that can turn for compass angle and height angle.
  • New data type “Aggregated Forecast Has History” for series that get measurement data for both child nodes and on parent level. Example can be wind power park with Real time measurements for the turbines and settled data for the whole Park. The new series type can combine both data sources to give an optimal forecast.
  • Optimization planning: Empower your market bids for Regulated Hydro power with the new feature of Optimization Planning in Aiolos! Takes factors such as Reservoir boundaries, water inflow and outflow from weather, Start&Stop costs of power plant, market prices, Season planning, etc. into account.

FOLLOW UP

  • Templates to quick selection of multiple Models
  • Scheduler available in Follow up
  • Market view diagram refinements
  • Regimes improvements: quickly delete in GUI, Apply for all checked series in GUI, etc
  • Added more Regimes: Max global radiation per day, to divide between sunny and not so sunny days.
  • For Regimes Current weights added and recommended to include in evaluations to find settings better than the existing
  • Temporarily delete Measured values to calculate Statistics without certain points influence. Can be used when outlier data disturbs the Follow up result, but outliers should remain in the system. Mark period and delete in Follow up to achieve this.
  • For Regimes, Max weight per model is now possible to set for the automatic model weighting, to limit a model’s possible final weighting.
  • For Regimes, Check all and uncheck all in Custom weighting Form to quickly make selections.
  • Input control for Model weights to set reasonable values.
  • Zip series from Series tree in Follow up
  • Pre-Aggregations gives lightning-fast historical data by summing historical data for Aggregated series and store them in temporary files, which will render a speed as fast as single historical series. It is compliant with new imports, series tree changes, manual changes to historical data for child nodes, etc. The feature needs to be activated in System settings.

CONFIG

  • Import of mixed - + values now possible [Behaviour change, use Import Absolute if needed]. As a result of increased series with mixed signs (Production and consumption in same series)
  • Export of any used parameter in Aiolos created, such as any used Weather parameters or Prices
  • Import & Export in any resolution wanted, regardless of used resolution in Aiolos.
  • Import & Export in any entity wanted (Power/Energy, Volume/Flow), regardless of used entity in Aiolos.
  • Improvements exports with different UTC time zones.
  • 4 different measurement time series per Forecast series now available, to be able to compare different sources with each other and use Indata Actions to replace with values from the other sources. Visualized in Indata.
  • Increased flexibility of Date format for exports
  • New possible storage of Max availability in file, to reduce space required in Scheduler, which enhances Performance.
  • MasterDataSync - can now also change Template with “Move”-functionality and assign to multiple different templates.
  • MasterDataSync can use REF1-field as identifier for Move.
  • Increased performance to administer series in Config, e.g. to delete multiple series.
  • 1 minute and Daily resolution added to Aiolos realm.
  • Setting files (ConfigSettings) moved to database for increased reliability and multi-user transaction handling.
  • Combined setting for StdText-loadexport protocol to export multiple forecast series as columns in a csv file.
  • Encrypted sensitive data at rest.
  • New storage in SQLite for energy measurements
  • Improvements in MasterDataSync to be able to connect a series to multiple series templates.
  • New automatic GUI tests
  • New fields called Extra1-10 can now also be used such as REF-fields to store information used in imports/exports or to classify series, so now there is a total of 20 variables for each Forecast series.
  • Improved Interpolation algorithm, which can be of extra importance when switching time Resolution for historic files to be aligned with updated market regulations.
  • Technical upgrade platform change from .Net framework to .NET7
  • Import weather from Greenbyte (measured weather at the power plant station) is now possible.
  • Configuration name can now be left out in autopar files as it assumes Current Directory where the script is situated.

MISCELLANEOUS FUNCTIONS

  • Technical upgrade, changed from .Net framework to .NET7, which makes everything faster and gives possibilities of more functions and future development.
  • Bulk delete Scheduled items in Indata/Home/Follow up by marking an area in the diagram, right click and choose Delete Scheduled items for selected series or all checked series.
  • Full screen mode of Diagram surface is available by right clicking in Diagram and select Maximize.
  • Improvements Interpolation algorithms when temporarily or structurally changing Resolution.
  • Autoscheduler improved for growing Sun parks to update Max.
  • New Homelive-storage of Energy forecasts for alternative models and alternative weather, which will be used in future Monitoring functionality, and in future Follow up speed enhancement projects. Enabled for all Homelive exports as a default and stored at export.
  • Improved functionality for yearly volume function in Scheduler
  • GUI improvement of icons and images
  • Double click aio-files in windows explorer to open a text dump of the content.
  • New automated alert system enabled, that can react to big deviations in 2 days ahead forecast with 1 day ahead, different Model forecasts, different weather providers, etc.
  • Time stamp for latest regimes update
  • ConsoleUI Manual generated inside the software in the File tab to guarantee all the latest functionalities are always up to date and described for Aiolos automation.
  • Added compatibility enhancements for time resolutions 1 minute, Daily, 10 and 20 minutes.
  • New Series tree functions "Copy Series Name" and "Copy REF-field" in Home/View, Follow up and Config to quickly access series name and REF-field info such as import or export ID.
  • Run Aiolos in complete Full screen mode by pressing F11 to suppress Windows tool bar, etc.