BPA Contracts Synexus Global® to Implement Real-Time Simulator

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is a US federal agency responsible for marketing the power from all federally owned hydroelectric projects (20,000-MW) in the Columbia River system. BPA currently uses LT Vista for long-term planning and ST Vista for short-term scheduling, as well as NRTO (near real time optimizer) for dispatch advice transmitted to the USACE and USBR.

ST Vista is run at least once each shift – typically several times – to provide guidance to the Duty Scheduler as to hourly plant generation and water releases.

A simulator has been developed to enable the Duty Scheduler to rapidly modify the schedule provided by Columbia Vista (CV) to respond to frequent changes that are normal in the real time environment. This will enable BPA to take advantage of optimum operation guidance from CV, while responding rapidly to frequent changes to the operations paradigm.

The new simulator will be site tested in August, 2007.