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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What is Predico?

  • Predico is a Collaborative Forecasting Platform designed to improve forecasting accuracy by facilitating collaboration between Market Owners (e.g., wind farm owners, grid operators) and Forecasters. You can interact with the platform via its REST API or through the web application.

2. Who are the main participants?

  • Market Owner: An entity that owns resources or manages grids, publishing forecasting challenges and funding the sessions.
  • Forecaster: An individual or organization that submits forecasts in response to challenges published by Market Owners. Forecasters compete on two leaderboards:
    • Market forecasters — compete for the monthly prize pool described in Rewards.
    • Fixed-payment forecasters — submit under a separate arrangement; they appear in the overall rankings but not in the market rank that drives payouts.

3. How do Market Sessions and Challenges work?

  • Market Session: A scheduled window during which Market Owners publish forecasting challenges and Forecasters submit their forecasts.
  • Market Challenge: A specific forecasting opportunity provided by a Market Owner, specifying details like target variables, time resolution and forecast horizon. See Sessions & Challenges for the full list of horizons.

4. What forecast horizons are available?

  • Intraday — the 24 h immediately after gate closure, with hourly gates throughout the day.
  • Day-Ahead (D+1) — the next calendar day, with sessions at 10:00
  • Extended (D+N) — target days D+2 through D+10, with a single daily gate at 10:00 CET.

5. What are the deterministic and probabilistic tracks?

  • Every challenge is scored on two independent tracks:
    • Deterministic — the Q50 (median) submission, scored by RMSE.
    • Probabilistic — the Q10 / Q90 quantile pair, scored by MWI (Mean Winkler Interval).
  • You rank, qualify, and earn rewards separately on each track. See Evaluation for the full scoring primer.

6. How do I register as a Forecaster?

  • Forecasters must apply by emailing predico@inesctec.pt. Upon acceptance, you will receive a registration link.

7. How are forecasts submitted?

  • Forecasts are submitted via HTTPS to the platform's API before each challenge's Gate Closure Time. Two submission paths exist:
    • Session forecast — one submission per variable per session, targeting a specific challenge window.
    • Continuous forecast — a longer-running forecast that the platform automatically slices into session submissions on your behalf at each gate closure.
  • For a given session, the most recent valid submission before Gate Closure is the one that counts. A session forecast always overrides a continuous forecast covering the same window — see How to Forecast.

8. When should I use a continuous forecast vs. a session forecast?

  • Continuous forecasts are the recommended baseline: submit once, and the platform handles per-session slicing across Intraday, D+1, and D+N. Best for forecasters running a steady model in production.
  • Session forecasts are best when you want to override the baseline for a specific session — e.g. you have a sharper short-horizon model, or you want to react to a late-breaking weather update.
  • See Preparing a Continuous Forecast and Preparing a Session Forecast.

9. Can I submit forecasts via the web dashboard?

  • No — submissions are API-only. The web dashboard is for viewing open sessions, scores, rankings, and analytics. Use the API (or a client built on it) to submit.

10. What are the rules for submitting forecasts?

  • Gate Closure Time: Forecasts must be submitted on time; late submissions are not accepted.
  • Forecast Resolution: 15-minute resolution across every horizon.
  • Coverage: Forecasts must cover the entire window of the challenge. For Intraday and D+1 / D+N day-targets, that is up to 96 timestamps per target day (92/100 on the March/October DST change days).

11. What's the difference between the playground and production environments?

12. How are forecasts evaluated and scored?

  • Please refer to the Evaluation section for the full 3-layer scoring primer.

13. Where can I see my scores and rankings?

14. How are payments handled?

  • Rewards are paid monthly. The full distribution — prize pool size, league tiers, daily-reward split, and eligibility rules — is documented in Rewards. Accepted regions, currency, and payment thresholds are deployment-specific and covered by the Participation Rulebook.

15. What compliance measures are in place?

  • Fair Play Policy: The market is designed to reward Forecasters making accurate forecasts. Integrity and honesty are paramount.
  • Prohibited Actions: Any attempt to interfere with the proper functioning of the market, platform, or competitors—including gaming the market—is strictly prohibited.
  • Disciplinary Actions: Violations will result in removal from the market, non-payment, and possible legal action.
  • Market Owner's Rights: The Market Owner reserves the right to remove a Forecaster from the market for any reason.

16. Where can I access relevant data?

  • Input data is available on Elia's Open Data Portal. You can also use external sources, like weather forecasts, to improve your submissions.

17. How will I be informed about updates?

  • The Market Owner will send important updates and rule changes via email. Forecasters are responsible for staying informed about any rule changes or updates.

18. Who can I contact for more information?

19. Do my quantile forecasts need to be ordered (Q10 ≤ Q50 ≤ Q90)?

  • Strongly recommended. The platform does not strictly enforce ordering at submission time, but crossing quantiles hurt the MWI score. See the "Before you submit" block in Preparing a Session Forecast.

20. What does it mean for a day to qualify? When am I penalised?

  • A day qualifies when every slot is filled (Intraday) or you've submitted your full Q10/Q50/Q90 to every opened session of that target day (D+1 / D+N). A day that fails qualification receives a peer Q75 penalty: your score for that day becomes the 75th-percentile score across qualifying peers. The penalty counts as a missed day for monthly league eligibility, but daily rewards remain available on every day you qualify. See Evaluation.

21. If I only submit a D+1 forecast (no intraday), do I lose my intraday score?

  • No. Your D+1 forecast fills every Intraday slot for the target day via the cross-horizon substitute mechanism, so you qualify on the Intraday leaderboard with a score equal to your D+1 forecast's error across the day's timestamps. You'll typically score worse than peers who also submit live intraday — but you still rank and are eligible for daily rewards.

22. What if there's a gap in the buyer's measurement data?

  • You are not penalised. Days whose observation series is incomplete are skipped for every forecaster across every horizon — no score, no penalty, no missed-day mark, no league-eligibility impact. This is by design: the buyer's telemetry hiccups must not propagate into forecaster scores.

23. What if I miss one of the two D+1 sessions of a day?

  • That day fails D+1 qualification → peer Q75 penalty. D+1 (and D+N) require submission to every opened session of the slice — typically the 10:00 CET/CEST sessions for the same target day. Submit your full Q10/Q50/Q90 to both. Intraday is exempt from this rule. See Day-Ahead & Extended Evaluation.

24. What happens if the monthly league doesn't have enough qualified forecasters?

  • The league tiers form by rank among qualified peers: ranks 1–5 are Elite, 6–10 Challenger, rank 11 Runner-Up, 12+ outside the league. When the qualified pool is smaller, some tiers simply don't form — Challenger needs ≥10 qualified peers and Runner-Up needs ≥11 for their thresholds to be computed. In the Analytics view this shows up as missing dashed lines on the daily chart and a fewer-zone league bar.
  • Payments are not lost. The share of the monthly prize pool tied to any unallocated tier rolls over into that envelope's daily-reward pool, which is distributed to the top 5 daily ranks on each day. So with e.g. 8 active market forecasters, the Challenger and Runner-Up slices are paid out as daily rewards instead.
  • Daily rewards always apply when you have a qualifying daily score, regardless of how many peers competed that month. See Rewards for the full breakdown and Evaluation for how scores are computed.

Feel free to consult the API documentation for technical details and guidelines on submission formats.