Specialist Consultants to the electricity supply industry

As part of its programme of replacing its Electricity Market Management system, Transpower required to have its existing Reserves Management Tool (RMT) integrated into the new Alstom Grid Market System as a further “Solving Engine".

The RMT application models the New Zealand AC and HVDC contingent event scenarios and the HVDC extended contingent event risk scenarios and calculates risk offset factors required for following SPD solves. The existing RMT consists of a user interface and control application with a back-end System Modelling solver based on the Matlab / Simulink modelling engine. The back-end solving engine consists of two applications collectively known as RMT_Solver.

The key role of RMTCTRL is to:

• Provide a control wrapper that integrates with Alstom Grid’s solver software framework (e-terrahabitat)
• Set up and run the RMT_Solver with input data for the solve provided by the Market System in a CSV file

RMTCTRL consists of a C/C++.Net application that provides the interface between Alstom Grid’s software framework and the actual business logic of setting up and running the RMT_SOLVER implemented in a VB.NET library. The input data required for solving and the solution data produced are passed between the Market System and RMTCTRL via Alstom Grid formatted CSV files.

Project Outline
PSC was engaged in 2007 for the investigation and interface design for integrating Transpower’s RMT application into the new Market System.

Subsequently PSC’s software design team was engaged to develop the software, in a project under the overall control of a Transpower project manager.

The work carried out by the PSC team included detailed design, coding, unit test, debugging and documentation.

Outcome
Following acceptance PSC provided ongoing software development support for client’s changing business requirements, and for deployment to the integration platforms with the new Market System.  PSC will provide support for commissioning to service and long-term maintenance support.

PSC Services
Services provided included:

• Specialist electricity market systems expertise
• Detailed investigation and interface design support
• Software development using .NET framework 1.1
• Commissioning support
• Maintenance support