Hierarchical Probabilistic Conformal Prediction for Distributed Energy Resources Adoption
This work addresses a critical problem for electric grid operators by providing reliable predictions for infrastructure planning, though it is incremental as it builds on existing conformal prediction and Hawkes process methods.
The paper tackles the problem of predicting distributed energy resources (DERs) adoption with uncertainty quantification for electric grid management, proposing a framework that ensures statistical guarantees across hierarchical grid structures and demonstrates improved predictive accuracy and uncertainty calibration on real-world solar panel installation data.
The rapid growth of distributed energy resources (DERs) presents both opportunities and operational challenges for electric grid management. Accurately predicting DER adoption is critical for proactive infrastructure planning, but the inherent uncertainty and spatial disparity of DER growth complicate traditional forecasting approaches. Moreover, the hierarchical structure of distribution grids demands that predictions satisfy statistical guarantees at both the circuit and substation levels, a non-trivial requirement for reliable decision-making. In this paper, we propose a novel uncertainty quantification framework for DER adoption predictions that ensures validity across hierarchical grid structures. Leveraging a multivariate Hawkes process to model DER adoption dynamics and a tailored split conformal prediction algorithm, we introduce a new nonconformity score that preserves statistical guarantees under aggregation while maintaining prediction efficiency. We establish theoretical validity under mild conditions and demonstrate through empirical evaluation on customer-level solar panel installation data from Indianapolis, Indiana that our method consistently outperforms existing baselines in both predictive accuracy and uncertainty calibration.