Add hardware, software, and required license to enable Transmission Operators to access the ERCOT network analysis software remotely through the ERCOT WAN. Implement secure access to the network applications that will insure that only authorized Transmission Operators will have access.
Reason:
The Network Analysis Applications is critical to ERCOT™s task of effectively operating the ERCOT Transmission System. State Estimation software indicates problems in the power system data. Inaccurate data modeling or bad real-time from the field data may cause these problems. Determining the cause of the problem remains a manual process. Review of the state estimation solutions and review of the ERCOT database information is critical in determining the base cause of the bad solutions. By allowing the Transmission Operators to have remote access to the State estimator case, they will be able to assist the ERCOT Staff in resolving these problems.
Also, most Transmission Operators have in-house network analysis software that they use to analyze their section of the transmission system. These in-house analyses have resulted in different solutions from the same analysis preformed on the ERCOT Network Analysis software. Allowing the Transmission Operators to also perform the same analysis using the ERCOT software should result in discovering the reasons why the results are different. This will result in a more correct database for each network analysis application.
