GTEng Transmission

⁠⁠⁠1. The Organisation
Western Power is a Western Australian State Government owned corporation which is responsible for building, maintaining and operating an electricity network which connects over 1.1 million customers to traditional and renewable energy sources.

2. Background

• Transmission network planning has historically been operated in a deterministic, unconstrained manner to facilitate an electrical market in which generator installations and dispatch are undertaken with limited consideration of network capacity.
• Under this arrangement, transmission network investments follow generator installations in order to operate the system for the proposed dispatch requirements.
• While this approach avoids exceedance of transmission network limits, it is conservative and thereby expensive.
• The high cost to upgrade the network to allow the connection of generators to the system increases system costs and acts as a prohibitor to new generators entering the market.
• Meanwhile, transformative changes are underway within the electricity industry.
• Power systems are shifting from large-scale, centrally located thermal-based generation systems, to systems of many renewable generators dispersed across both the transmission and distribution network.
• The industry has recognised that it is not possible to justify an unconstrained power system model going into the future due to the prohibitive costs of connecting new generation and the abundance of renewable generation, of which do not need to operate within an operational band as is the case for thermal generators.
• In order to meet Western Power’s business requirements when moving to a constrained market, it is necessary to coordinate investment between the network and the MWh/MW market.
• Therefore, long-term planning modelling which coordinates between generation, storage, transmission and distribution investment is required to assess plausible future scenarios.

3. Scope of Work

• Western Power is seeking to improve its long-term planning capabilities through the development of a modelling toolkit referred to as the Grid Transformation Engine (GTEng).
• The GTEng presently models the distribution network, while the transmission network modelling is under development.
• The GTEng Transmission project aims to optimise the long-term future transmission network investment to meet plausible future scenarios of altered demand, growth and technology, while adhering to system and market constraints.
• The optimisation is required to address both capacity expansion planning (CEP) and security constrained optimal power flow (SCOPF).
• The modelling is to inform of network congestion and increase the utilisation of transmission assets while maintaining performance at the lowest practical cost.
• The outputs must also be able to demonstrate the benefits of making specific investment decisions.
• It has been identified that existing modelling software exists that may be able to address Western Power requirements to varying extents.
• Western Power is seeking registrations of interest from qualified and experienced organisations for the provision of an integrated generation, transmission, storage and distribution network long-term planning model. Western Power will be targeting businesses that can demonstrate their capability and capacity to address the modelling described in the Scope of Work and Functional Requirements.
• The shortlisted vendors may have an opportunity to provide a trial over a two-week period (14 days) to showcase the functionality of their product/service in addressing Western Power’s requirements.

4. Functional Requirements
The GTEng Transmission modelling solution must be able to address the CEP and SCOPF problems.
It must:

• be able to address the role of generation in network balance (supply | demand) and stability (ancillary services) resolved at 5-minute intervals.
• be able to model down to the nodal level with at least 200 nodes and allow for meshing of the transmission network.
• be able to model transmission connected storage.
• be able to model distribution connected generation and storage in some form.
• be accurate enough to be useful and fast enough to execute within an annual step in a long-term scenario (nominally 30 years).

*We are looking to determine whether existing software solutions in the market are able to meet the requirements for the GTEng Transmission project.
*We are NOT looking for broad platforms that can be used to develop custom models to address the GTEng Transmission requirements, but rather for software systems that already include much of the underlying functionality.

5. Registration Requirements
Suppliers are required to respond to the following for the Registration of Interest submission:

• Demonstrate track record and capability in delivering services in relation to the modelling stated in the Scope of Work and Functional Requirements.
• If available, references from at least three customers whom you have offered similar services.
• Safety, health & environment information to be requested as part of this exercise.

To be considered, please register your interest by 4pm on Friday 19th November by emailing roy.cope@westernpower.com.au and a registration request will be sent to you for completion upon which it will be reviewed by Western Power.

Please ensure the following details are included in your registration:

Advertised event number(s):