SUCCESS STORIES
California ISO Installation and On-line Production
In early 2007, CAISO Grid Operations felt a need to equip the control room floor operators with advanced tools for real-time assessment of voltage security of the grid. The senior executives included it in the Five Year Business Plan and earmarked the implementation of the Real-Time VSA tool in 2008.
The Network Applications department and the VSA implementation team at CAISO evaluated a large number of vendors. After narrowing the field down into two finalists, their EMS vendor and BSI, the vendor of choice was Bigwood Systems, Inc.
The Voltage Stability Analysis and Enhancement (VSA&E) is an essential tool for maintaining transmission grid reliability. The CAISO VSA&E implementation operates in six modes and includes many advanced capabilities such as, integration of renewable energy, CIM compliance, and Remedial Action Schemes (RAS) and Special Protection Systems (SPS) modeling and simulation of contingencies.
Real-Time (VSA&E/RT) provides real-time assessment of the Voltage Security of the system based on the current operation point state estimation. Look-Ahead (VSA&E/LA) provides a user friendly tool to give a quantitative view of where voltage problems exist ahead at a future point in time, the proximity of the system (system margin) operating point to the problem and what operations can be taken to steer the system into towards the secure operating regions. In addition, Study (VSA&E/Study) offers tools to assess the voltage security of any on-line case or planning case in a comprehensive study environment.
VSA&E enhancement and preventive control recommendations provide the system operators a set of operations that can be taken to steer the system into secure operating regions with increased load margins and avoid insecure next contingencies.
On-line VSA&E had been operational since 2008 in the CAISO control centers at Folsom, CA and Alhambra, CA. In 2010, CAISO took steps to provide ISO decision makers a longer forecast window that gives them time to identify long-term voltage issues and prevent voltage collapse by making a major enhancement to VSA&E. Two new VSA&E production lines were added, VSA&E Day-ahead (VSA&E/DA) to assess a forecast based on the hourly day-ahead information covering a 24-hour period and VSA&E Short-Term Unit Commitment (VSA&E/STUC) to assess a forecast based on 15-minute short-term unit commitment information covering a 4.5-hour period. VSA&E technology is now used corporate-wide by Grid Operations, Reliability Coordination, Regional Transmission Planning – North & South, EMS-IT, IT and the Network Applications. In 2013, BSI delivered VSA&E/Renewable to CAISO to meet the California challenge of 30% renewable energy by 2020.
Bigwood Products Operating at CAISO:
