System planners harness the power of information

Major applications used to perform modeling in the Victorian Power Exchange in Australia are a power system simulator (PSS/E), electricity market model (VISION), load forecasting, electromagnetic transients (ATP), harmonic analysis (VHARM), and eigenvalue analysis (MUDPUCK). These applications use specific subsets of the same set of data. The planning process requires data flow between technical applications as well as data transfer from operational systems into the planning environment. The format of data that is required by the applications does not correspond to the relational data structure in the database. This raises the issue of a comprehensive data management system that provides a repository for the applications' data requirements, data communication between applications, transfer of operational data into the planning environment, and data models as input for the applications. The Victorian Power Exchange (VPX) commenced a data management system project for their System Planning and Development division. The system consists of a generic data repository (planning database), an interface to surrounding systems, and data modeling with the models stored in the modeling database. The planning database contains a description of the power system relevant for planning purposes. Its structure follows the power system topology, and the contents are defined by actual or planned values of the power system parameters.