Vista Newsletter, May 15, 2009

The headlines are as follows (click headline for detailed story):

Volta River Authority Gears Up for Vista Installation
In late 2008, the Volta River Authority (VRA) of Ghana, West Africa awarded a contract to Synexus Global to provide a “Generation Strategy Study for the Akosombo and Kpong Generation Stations”, including an installation of LT Vista and ST Vista.

Saskpower Unveils Hydro Modernization Project
Saskpower has contracted Synexus Global to provide an upgrade to their AUTO Vista application, and to train a group of new Vista users.

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro Commissions ST Vista
Vista DSS^TM has been implemented for short-term scheduling of hydroelectric generation at Newfoundland & Labrador Hydro (NLH), a Nalcor Energy Company in the province of Newfoundland Labrador, Canada.

Synexus Wins Water Management Software Contract In Laos
Synexus has been awarded a significant water-management software-development contract for the world's largest private-sector-financed hydroelectric project, the 1070 MW Nam Theun 2 Power Project in Laos.

Bonneville Power Administration Masters AUTO Vista in Wind Integration Study
BPA has recently completed extensive studies of wind integration within their control area. They utilized AUTO Vista to assess wind penetrations of between 1400 MW and 6600 MW.

2009 User Group Meeting
The Vista User Group Meeting will be held on Friday, September 18, 2009 somewhere in the western coastal region of the USA (location to be announced soon). Registration forms will be circulated to Vista clients shortly.

Waterpower XVI in Spokane, WA
Come to visit us at Booth #1007 at Waterpower XVI 2009 in Spokane Washington, July 27 to 30, 2009

Optimization Workshop at Waterpower XVI
Synexus Global will be presenting a 4-hour optimization workshop on the day before the Waterpower XVI Technical sessions. The session will be held on Tuesday, July 28, 2009, from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm.

Synexus Global Announces Vista@Plant
New Vista@Plant module provides within-plant unit dispatch logic for real-time operations guidance for one or more hydro stations.

LT Vista Getting Increased Duty in Study Mode
In recent months, LT Vista is being employed more and more for long-term planning studies with a horizon at 20 or 30 years out, and also for long-term energy yield studies. See this link for a graphical output from one of these analyses.

Synexus Global Organization
Synexus Global has been wholly owned by Hatch Ltd. since 2007, and now becomes a division within the Hatch Ltd. Renewable Power (RP) business unit.

Synexus Global Staffing
We welcome Dr. Ram Acharya and Mr. Hugh John Cook to the ranks!

Dispatch Algorithm Enhanced
The generating unit dispatch algorithm has been enhanced to rigorously handle complex hydraulic head losses in branching conduit systems. Previously, the dispatch considered plant losses that were common for all units, and unit losses which were built into the unit characteristics. This method ignored situations where head losses in a conduit impacted only some of the downstream units. It also required a plant to be split into two or more sub-plants if there were multiple power tunnels. The new methodology can handle multiple branching conduits within a single power plant.

Optimization System Offered for BPA Slice Customers
Vista DSS^TM has been configured for the six BPA Slice facilities on the Columbia River, and an optimization package is now available to Slice customers. The package includes data access functionality and optimization of the schedule. Outputs will be formatted to enable direct export to the on-line Slice Computer Application (SCA) provided by BPA.

Increase Hydro Capacity
“In 2005, the U.S. Climate Change Technology Program estimated that retrofitting advanced technologies and optimizing system operations at existing hydro facilities would produce at least a 6 percent increase in capacity” -- Jon Wellinghoff, FERC Commissioner, Jan 2008 statement