Applied Energy · 2026

Counterfactual load forecasting with LLM-structured events and representation learning

Yujie Chen, Yifei Gao, Runyao Yu, Yuhe Wu, Guangyu Wang, Yue Chen, Tongxin Li

Applied Energy

How might electricity demand change under a different news event?

NACF turns news into structured treatments and estimates load trajectories under alternative event conditions. Reweighting and representation balancing address observed confounding. Experiments examine factual accuracy and interpretable demand perturbations without claiming that unobserved counterfactual outcomes can be directly validated.

Research themes

Connections

Context becomes an energy system input

OpenCEM motivates shared contextual energy benchmarks. INSTRUCT MPC uses instructions for control, while counterfactual load forecasting represents news events as interventions on electricity demand.

Cite this paper

Yujie Chen, Yifei Gao, Runyao Yu, Yuhe Wu, Guangyu Wang, Yue Chen, Tongxin Li. Counterfactual load forecasting with LLM-structured events and representation learning. Applied Energy, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2026.128554

BibTeX
@article{tongxin-counterfactual-load,
  title = {{Counterfactual load forecasting with LLM-structured events and representation learning}},
  author = {Yujie Chen and Yifei Gao and Runyao Yu and Yuhe Wu and Guangyu Wang and Yue Chen and Tongxin Li},
  year = {2026},
  journal = {Applied Energy},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2026.128554},
  doi = {10.1016/j.apenergy.2026.128554}
}
2025ACM e-Energy demo

Open In-Context Energy Management Platform

Yikai Lu, Tinko Sebastian Bartels, Ruixiang Wu, Fanzeng Xia, Xudong Wang, Yifei Wu, Haoxiang Yang, Tongxin Li

OpenCEM presents a platform design connecting energy time series, events, human context, and simulation. An on campus solar and battery installation motivates evaluation of context sensitive control. The paper describes planned data and API capabilities.