Review of TVA's Load Forecast Risk

As part of a series of reviews to evaluate the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) actions to address key risks, the OIG evaluated TVA's load forecast risk. Load forecast was identified as a top five strategic business unit risk in the Long Range Planning Process Risk Category in fiscal year (FY) 2011. The objective of this review was to evaluate TVA's load forecast risk to identify opportunities to improve mitigation strategies and assess whether mitigation strategies were designed appropriately to address the identified risk.While EL&RF is taking actions to mitigate risk associated with load forecasting, we found opportunities exist to improve the mitigation strategy documentation. The documented mitigation strategy does not reflect planned actions to improve data integrity or the regular updates to the forecast models and economic drivers. Additionally, we found mitigations are generally designed appropriately. However, we noted EL&RF does not have any compensating controls to prevent inadvertent modifications to data until the Demand & Data Consolidation Process is completed.We recommended the Senior Vice President, Strategy, Financial Planning & Business Development, (1) enhance the load forecast documented mitigation strategy to include the mitigations planned, or already occurring but not listed, as part of the strategy and (2) implement measures to reduce the likelihood of inadvertent modifications to data until the Demand & Data Consolidation Process is completed. TVA management agreed with our findings and recommendations and has taken actions to address them.