Application of Advanced Computing Methods to Transmission System Operational Studies at the Bonneville Power Administration

This paper describes a project that will improve response to emergency transmission system conditions by providing Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) operations planning study engineers with the tools to quickly and effectively set System Operating Limits based on current system conditions. Growth of new intermittent renewable resources, smart grid controls, and increased environmental, political, and market demands, are pushing the transmission system to operate with less margin than today. In the future, the data, assumptions, and analysis tools on which today's operational decisions rely will no longer be fast or accurate enough to reliably manage a system operated closer to the reliability limits. This paper describes improvements accomplished by BPA through use of real time data and distributed processing. Initial studies are shown applying distributed processing and real time base cases to an actual contingency event on the BPA transmission system.