AIRWeather Offers Complete Set of Weather Data Products for the Energy Industry with the Release of PerfecTemp Hourly

January 1, 2011 / 4 min read

BOSTON, Feb. 18, 2003 — AIRWeather, a division of AIR Worldwide Corporation (AIR) and a leading provider of high-quality meteorological data and forecasting technology for the energy sector, today announced the release of PerfecTemp Hourly, the first cleaned and reconstructed hourly station temperature database for the United States. PerfecTemp Hourly incorporates data from all primary U.S. weather stations and provides accurate hourly temperature data dating back to 1977.

PerfecTemp Hourly is the latest addition to AIRWeather's suite of high-quality weather data and forecasting products that are used by energy and other weather-sensitive companies to improve operational planning and weather risk-management strategies.

APS Energy Services Co. (APSES), one of the most experienced energy service providers in the western United States, recently started using PerfecTemp Hourly to incorporate into its energy load forecasting and demand volatility risk analysis. "We are impressed with AIRWeather's temperature data in terms of its integrity and completeness. PerfecTemp Hourly has greatly helped us in resolving the numerous missing data gaps we have faced with data sets acquired from other sources," states Brian Ochs, climate data consultant at APSES.

"High-quality hourly temperature data is vital to weather-sensitive industries by helping companies better understand and model the impact of weather on business," said Mark Gibbas, senior research meteorologist at AIRWeather. For electric utilities such as APSES, that supply power to end users, variations in hourly temperature can significantly impact demand and system load on any given day. "If demand surpasses available capacity, the utility is forced to fill the void by purchasing energy on the spot market at inflated prices," Mr. Gibbas explained. "To minimize operational costs, it is important for utilities to forecast expected load accurately. The first step to improving load-demand models is to start with high-quality weather data."

Yannis Tzamouranis is familiar with AIRWeather's high-quality data products from his work as director of financial research at Dynegy. "The quality of meteorological data is critical to the success of the weather-related business decisions of energy companies," said Mr. Tzamouranis, currently director of quantitative research at Republic Power. "Historical weather data from national meteorological sources cannot be relied upon solely, due to their gaps and errors. AIRWeather has addressed these problems meticulously and with robust statistical techniques. As a result, AIRWeather provides corrected historical meteorological data that can be trusted for critical decision-support analyses, such as best hedge estimators for weather contracts, hourly power load forecasting, gas demand forecasting, and automatic generation of forward weather curves. Previous quantitative and comparative studies of weather data have made it clear to me that quality is AIRWeather's highest priority in addressing the need for historical weather data in the energy industry," said Mr. Tzamouranis.

"AIRWeather embarked on the effort to improve data quality in order to fill a large void in the industry," said S. Ming Lee, senior vice president at AIR. "So many companies are impacted by temperature variations, but the quality of publicly available raw data is not adequate to serve their needs." Common problems with raw data include erroneous values, data gaps, station shifts, instrument changes and environmental impacts — all of which adversely impact the quality of data.

To address these problems, AIRWeather developed new data cleaning methodologies based on the original research of its meteorological team. The cleaning process involves identifying data gaps and erroneous values and replacing these with high quality estimates. After the data are cleaned, the reconstruction process corrects for time series shifts and trends that are the result of non-weather related factors, such as station moves, instrument changes and other environmental changes. All cleaned and reconstructed data are then rigorously tested to ensure accuracy and the highest quality.

PerfecTemp Hourly completes AIRWeather's suite of weather data products for the energy sector that includes PerfecTemp Daily and CleanTempRT Daily. PerfecTemp Daily is AIRWeather's database of cleaned and reconstructed daily maximum and minimum temperature data. CleanTempRT Daily is AIRWeather's service providing cleaned real-time daily maximum and minimum temperature data.

About AIRWeather
AIRWeather, the weather technology division of AIR Worldwide Corporation (AIR), is a leading provider of high-quality weather data and forecasting technology to companies in weather-sensitive industries. Building on AIR's 15 years of catastrophe modeling expertise, AIRWeather's web-based data and forecasting products are the most comprehensive available to help companies improve operational planning and weather risk-management strategies. AIR is headquartered in Boston and has additional offices in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit the AIR website at www.air-worldwide.com.

About ISO
ISO is a leading source of information, products and services related to property and liability risk. For a broad spectrum of commercial and personal lines of insurance, ISO provides analytical and decision-support products, consulting, technical services, statistical services and data processing. ISO's products help customers with sales and prospecting, underwriting, rating and quoting, customer management, policy administration, product development, claims administration and fraud detection. Through its iiX and Intellicorp subsidiaries, ISO also provides motor vehicle reports, police reports and criminal-records information. Through its AIR Worldwide subsidiary, ISO helps customers with reinsurance analysis and assessment of the risk of natural and man-made catastrophes. In the United States and around the world, ISO serves insurers, reinsurers, agents, brokers, self-insureds, risk managers, insurance regulators and other government agencies.

Release: Immediate

Contacts:
Giuseppe Barone / Erica Helton
MWW Group (for ISO)
201-507-9500
gbarone@mww.com / ehelton@mww.com

Mike Gannon (AIR)
617-267-6645