Marquette Energy Analytics forecasts future

There is a joke that says if you don’t like the weather in Wisconsin, just wait an hour; it’s sure to change. If you take a look at the weather records, you’ll find there is some truth in that old chestnut.

Last winter, Milwaukee experienced a 50-degree temperature fluctuation in a single day. On February 27, the city reached a daily record high temperature of 74 degrees. Hours later, early in the morning of February 28, the temperature plummeted to 23 degrees.

Milwaukee is not unique to these extreme temperature fluctuations; these weather shifts happen all over the world. Meteorologists aren’t the only professionals who scramble when the weather makes headlines. Energy companies also need to quickly react when extreme weather blows into a region.

To plan for sudden spikes in energy usage, some of the largest utility companies in the United States turn to Milwaukee startup Marquette Energy Analytics for help.

Launched in 2018, the forecasting company is a spinout of a project that started on the Marquette University campus in 1994. CEO Tom Quinn, who has been with the project since 2004, is the driving force behind the development of the company’s most popular product, MCast Power Tool. The Software as a Service (SaaS) product is currently being used to forecast 28% of the natural gas used in the United States, and a growing number of electric providers.

“I think being part of the energy industry in the world during this time is very exciting and very important,” Quinn said.

“Almost all of our work is some form of forecasting energy demand. In the natural gas industry, the sort of extreme event you need to prepare for is the coldest, snowiest, blizzard where the demand for natural gas energy is going to be at its highest. That sort of theoretical day they (the natural gas industry) hope never quite becomes reality is called the ‘design day.’ On the electric side there are also extreme event driven days to be forecasted for. We help the utility companies to make sure there’s going to be enough energy so that homes don’t get cold on that coldest day in the middle of January,” he explained.

It is data that drives this innovative startup forward.

“It’s just math, machine learning, and lots and lots of data. I think what makes us unique is we have the capability to use all the historical data that’s available, and all of that data is primarily going to be weather data and past energy usage,” Quinn continued.

“Our approach is non-obvious, until it is explained. Being university based, we actually do a lot of teaching. It’s not a secret, but it’s also really difficult to do. We have this computing infrastructure that we’ve been building for 20 years. The computers themselves have changed and the programming languages have changed, but the algorithms are the same so we can take enormous data sets representing energy use over many areas over many years and within several minutes adjust that historical data so that it looks like it just happened. That’s something that would take somebody else a long, long time to build,” he said.

The growing company offers software that allows short term and long-term forecasting in both electric and natural gas providers and is currently beta-testing a midrange forecasting tool that allows users to focus on the nuances of seasonal forecasting.

“The goal is to grow our business and to help with the energy transition that’s going on in this country from fossil fuels to electric power and to provide the data analytics to support that. One of the logical outcomes for us when the time is right is going to be an exit to an energy industry provider that provides a full suite of services and maybe even hardware towers, tables, and meters. We’re a stand-alone solution that straddles both industries and we’re having good success being there. Niche solutions like ours tend to become part of larger suites,” Quinn said.

Marquette Energy Analytics recently moved its headquarters into the Pritzlaff Building.

“It’s terrific being here because we’re much more plugged into what’s happening in startups and technology in Milwaukee… We love the vibe here. We love the pulse of the place. We’re all very active (in the ecosystem). I love meeting other founders and new companies. We are proud to be part of Milwaukee’s startup and technology scene,” he said.

To learn more about this startup, connect with the company here.