Loveland, CO -- Bigwood Systems, Inc. (BSI) was selected by the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) to supply a real-time and look-ahead stability analysis and control tool. The online Voltage Stability Assessment and Enhancement (VSA&E) tool went into online production at WAPA on October 1, 2020. This online upgrade for WAPA’s operations supports the WAPA vision of “enhancing America’s energy security and sustaining our nation’s economic vitality”.
WAPA will use the real-time VSA&E at both their Colorado and Arizona control centers to calculate total transfer capability (TTC), path limits, and system stability while using the voltage stability enhancement engine to determine mitigation actions to improve reliability.
The BSI VSA&E Online Package is widely used by control center operators, reliability engineers, transmission planners, and power market personnel across the country and internationally. Notable implementations are the EMS control center, operational since 2005 at PJM Interconnection (Audubon, PA) and the California Independent System Operator control center (Folsom, CA) since 2008.
Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) is one of the four power marketing administrations within the U.S. Department of Energy. WAPA’s role is to market wholesale hydropower generated at 56 hydroelectric federal dams operated by the Bureau of Reclamation, United States Army Corps of Engineers and the International Boundary and Water Commission. WAPA delivers this power through a more than 17,000-circuit-mile, high-voltage power transmission system to more than 700 preference power customers across the West. Those customers, in turn, provide retail electric service to more than 40 million consumers. WAPA is headquartered in the Denver, Colorado suburb of Lakewood, Colorado.