UK Power Networks' Kent Active System Management (KASM) Project awarded to BSI

Category: Advanced Distribution Management Systems

London, United Kingdom -- Bigwood Systems, Inc., a world leader in developing innovative tools for power grid assessment, monitoring, analysis, operation, control, and optimization, announces its November 2015 selection as the sole software provider for United Kingdom Power Networks (UKPN) for an innovative solution to be deployed for the 132kV network in the Kent Active System Management (KASM) project.

UK Power Networks provides power to a quarter of the UK’s population via its electricity distribution networks in London that span to the east and southeast of England. The KASM project won a competitive funding award from the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), the grid regulator in the UK, through the Low Carbon Networks (LCN) Fund.

The project overview from the Ofgem funding announcement states:

“This project seeks to address the operational and planning challenges that are arising from large amounts of intermittent solar PV and wind generation connecting to the distribution networks. Kent Area System Management (KASM) would seek to trial Contingency Analysis – a software tool that could improve DNOs’ ability to manage their 132kV networks in the face of these challenges.”

After extensively reviewing vendor responses to UKPN’s proposal request, Bigwood Systems was selected as the preferred solution provider to supply the BSI Contingency Analysis Solution and the BSI Elite Multi Time-Scale Load and Generation Forecasters.

Implementation of the BSI Contingency Analysis Solution will be configured for each of UKPN’s three required operation modes:

·        Real-time mode (reliability management using on-line data)

·        On-line Study mode (infrastructure planning using historical data and archived on-line cases)

·        On-line Look Ahead mode (outage planning using forecasted data)

Bigwood Systems additionally provides services to develop integration software to support the necessary connectivity and special features for the UKPN operation and provides services for project design, development, and testing tasks.

The large-scale project is set to go live during the first quarter of 2016.