Vista Users in the “News”

Tacoma Power in Site Acceptance Testing
Tacoma Power, located in Spokane, Washington, USA, has successfully completed the Factory Acceptance Testing of LT Vista, and will soon be undertaking the Site Acceptance Test (SAT) as well as the associated training program.

Tacoma Power has approximately 1300-MW of hydro generation on its river systems and contracts with adjacent generators for an additional 700-MW of hydro generation. (See first pic)


Licensing Studies at Idaho Power
Idaho Power has completed an AUTO Vista study to assess a number of operations scenarios.

IPCo of Boise, Idaho, has undertaken an analysis with AUTO Vista to determine the effects of 11 modified operations scenarios for each of five hydrologic cases – 55 years of operations! The runs assessed the hourly operations over one planning year (8766 hours) for each of five hydrologies. (See second pic)


Power Marketing for the Central Valley Project
The Western Area Power Administration, located in Sacramento, CA, has been successfully using LT Vista and ST Vista as follows.

• to plan generation and associated power supplies for their own project use, and for priority customers for “Day 3” ahead
• to rebalance “Day 2” operations with planned generation adjustments and with market transactions, to accommodate changing conditions (inflow forecast, flow constraints, demands, etc)
• to specify the generation obligation for “Day 1” to USBR, who dispatch the facilities and meet hydraulic constraints

The Central Valley Project system includes:
• Trinity-Sacramento River system, comprising five power plants totaling 1260-MW
• American River system, comprising two power plants totaling 230-MW
• Stanislaus River system, with one power plant with 383-MW. (See third pic)


PacifiCorp Powers On…
PacifiCorp continues to take advantage of LT Vista for generation planning of hydroelectric facilities on the Lewis River (3 plants, 198-MW), Klamath River (6 plants, 163-MW, and the North Umpqua River (8 plants, 187-MW). In addition, they are employing ST Vista on a daily basis for the same facilities to schedule operations on an hourly basis.

Richard Allen recently spent a week with the PacifiCorp Vista users to fine tune Vista use. PacifiCorp earns our praise as a “power user”!


Hydro – Wind Integration Paper Presented
A presentation was made on coordination of hydroelectric and wind generation at the CanWEA Wind Energy Conference in Toronto, and also at the CEATI Water Management Workshop on Decision Support Software.

Bill Girling of Manitoba Hydro and Diana Hurdowar-Castro of Synexus Global made the presentation at the CanWEA Wind Energy Conference. The title of the presentation was “Coordination of Hydroelectric and Wind Generation for Manitoba Hydro” and can be accessed at [LINK]. (See fourth pic)

An updated presentation was made in November at the CEATI Water Management Workshop on Decision Support Software. This presentation was made by Kevin Gawne, standing in for Bill Girling of Manitoba Hydro, as well as Stu Bridgeman and Diana Hurdowar-Castro of Synexus. The slide show can be viewed at the following [LINK].