In-Context Residual Calibration for Uncertainty Quantification of Energy Time Series over Graphs

arXiv:2606.31804v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Accurate energy demand forecasting is essential for the reliable operation and planning of modern sustainable energy systems. Spatial-temporal graph neural networks (STGNNs) have recently achieved strong performance in point forecasting by jointly modeling temporal dynamics and relational dependencies across interconnected energy nodes. However, in real-world energy systems, accurate point forecasts alone are insufficient, as operators also require reliable uncertainty estimates to support risk-aware decision-making, grid stability, and operational planning under uncertainty. Conformal prediction provides a principled and model-agnostic framework for uncertainty quantification under exchangeability assumptions, making it particularly attractive for safety-critical energy applications. However, existing conformal prediction approaches often fail to fully capture the complex spatial-temporal structure of energy systems. To address these limitations, we propose STOIC (Spatial-Temporal uncertainty quantificatiOn via In-Context learning), a conformal-inspired post-hoc residual calibration framework that integrates graph-based forecasting with the in-context learning capabilities of tabular foundation models. STOIC first generates point forecasts using an STGNN and subsequently reformulates spatial-temporal residuals into a tabular representation suitable for in-context learning. Leveraging a tabular foundation model, STOIC estimates feature-conditional residual quantiles without task-specific retraining of the calibration model, effectively capturing both sequential and relational dependencies. STOIC should be viewed as a conformal-inspired residual calibration method and does not by itself provide a finite-sample distribution-free coverage guarantee under arbitrary temporal dependence...