The ongoing evolution of the Colorado Springs Utilities EMS minimizing the impact on system operation

When Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) purchased their energy management system (EMS), they envisioned a system that would provide for their needs and continue to evolve to meet future requirements. CSU also wanted to be able to keep current with the latest technology and operate their system with minimal staff. The initially purchased EMS provided a distributed architecture which allowed for the planned future expansion to 2500 (generation, transmission, and mostly distribution) RTUs and the addition of processors as required. The desire to keep the system current as new technologies became available is the basis for an ongoing collaboration between CSU and the EMS supplier, which has allowed CSU to incrementally evolve the system to meet all the functional requirements within budget constraints. The first update to the initially designed system was the replacement of the applications processor with high performance workstations, dramatically reducing the cost of maintenance and greatly improving the response time of the advanced power system Applications. At the same time proprietary interfaces were removed, moving the system to a more open architecture. The second update was the replacement of the remaining proprietary communications links and the existing proprietary full graphics display generators with RISC workstations. Major emphasis in the evolution process stressed timely development and testing of the upgrade with collaborative installation planning, which minimized the impact to ongoing operations.