| 摘要 |
The demand for a particular commodity (e.g. electricity) for a group of consumers is forecast uring measured data about the current consumption of the commodity by individual consumers as well as personal forecasts by the individual consumers as to what they think their future requirements of the commodity will be. The current consumption data, as well as the personal forecasts, are transmitted to a database via a computer network such as the Internet. The data and forecasts are then used to calculate the future demand of the commodity for a group of consumers. Thus, any one-off event or abnormal increase is catered for in calculating the future demand. The forecast demand is used by commodity traders, vendors, resellers, etc to decide how much of the commodity they need to purchase to satisfy their customers' demand. Personal forecasts can be entered by any time, thereby allowing the forecast demand to be updated constantly. |
