Validated Data Onboarding for AI Demand Forecasting on U.S. Building Meter Data: Design, Controlled Evaluation, and a Corrected Negative Result

Electric utilities and grid operators increasingly rely on machine-learning models to forecast next-day demand, and those models learn from meter data that is routinely defective: readings go missing, sensors freeze, buildings read zero for hours, and units change by a factor of 100. This report pre