About Me BiographyDr. Tao Hong received his B.Eng. in Automation from Tsinghua University in Beijing (2005), a M.S. in Electrical Engineering (2008), a M.S. with co-majors in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering (2008), and a Ph.D. with co-majors in Operations Research and Electrical Engineering (2010) from North Carolina State University. Dr. Hong is currently the Research Director and Associate Professor at the Systems Engineering and Engineering Management Department of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Hong’s major areas of expertise are in forecasting and optimization. He has applied various statistical and optimization techniques to the development of algorithms and tools for utility applications of analytics such as energy forecasting; power system planning; renewable integration; reliability planning; and risk management. He has been providing consulting and education services to over 100 organizations across all sectors of the utility industry. The long term spatial load forecasting methodology implemented in his MS thesis and the short term forecasting methodology proposed in his PhD dissertation have been commercialized and deployed to many utilities worldwide. Dr. Hong currently serves as the Founding Chair of the IEEE Working Group on Energy Forecasting, where he leads the efforts of improving the forecasting practices of the utility industry. He is the General Chair of Global Energy Forecasting Competitions, which attracted thousands of participants from over 60 countries. He is an editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid and the past Guest Editor-in-Chief of its Special Section on Analytics for Energy Forecasting with Applications to Smart Grid. He is a guest editor of International Journal of Forecasting Special Issue on Probabilistic Energy Forecasting. Dr. Hong is the Lead Instructor of the IEEE Tutorial “Energy Forecasting in the Smart Grid Era”. He is the host of Tao’s Energy Forecasting Webinar Series, which has attracted hundreds of professionals from more than 80 organizations. He is an instructor at SAS Institute teaching the Business Knowledge Series course "Electric Load Forecasting: Fundamentals and Best Practices", the first SAS course dedicated to the utility industry. From May 2012 to June 2013, this course was offered 11 times to 117 professionals from 47 organizations including 30 US utilities, ISOs and REPs. Prior to joining UNC Charlotte, Dr. Hong was an Senior Industry Consultant and the Head of Energy Forecasting at SAS Institute, where he lead research, development, consulting, marketing and sales of the forecasting vertical of the energy business unit. He was a Principal Engineer at Quanta Technology, where he led forecasting related consulting projects and tasks. He was an adjunct instructor at NC State University teaching load forecasting and demand response related topics at both Electrical & Computer Engineering Department and the Institute for Advanced Analytics. 2013 - present University of North Carolina at Charlotte
2011 - 2013 SAS Institute, Inc
2008 - 2011 Quanta Technology, LLC
EducationNorth Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC USA Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R.China
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