Alstom delivers energy market solutions for Southwest Power Pools new integrated marketplace

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Alstom successfully delivered its e-terra™ energy market management solutions on time for Southwest Power Pool’s (SPP) day-ahead and real-time Integrated Marketplace. The new market system combines 16 separate energy entities (consisting of investor-owned utilities, public power, municipalities and electric cooperatives) in the southwestern region of the United States, into one. These entities manage energy resources, and ensure that there is sufficient power generation at any time to reliably supply electricity. The new system is expected to realize up to $100 million in annual net benefits.

SPP is a Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) that operates the power grid in nine states, serving 15 million customers in the southwestern region of the United States. Its new marketplace will optimize energy reserve sharing, providing member utilities access to more diverse power generation resources. It will also facilitate the reliable integration of the region’s vast renewable resources, including 90 gigawatts of potential wind generation.

“Working with a technology vendor like Alstom, with whom we share a successful history, made a huge difference in the accomplishment of our Integrated Marketplace going live, on-time and on-budget.  Alstom’s solutions lowered the overall cost and complexity of this major effort, accelerating the benefits for our members and their communities,” said Bruce Rew, SPP’s Vice President of Operations.

Signed in May 2011, Alstom deployed its e-terra 3.0 suite of applications with market operations and settlements technology, to solve complex energy scheduling and massive financial calculations with minimal resources.  The same software is already used in other regional US markets to handle over 1,000 terawatt hours and $40 billion of energy transactions per year.

The project also included an upgrade of Alstom’s network modeling and energy management systems, helping SPP to better manage reliability and outages across the region. 

“Alstom values its more than 15 years of collaboration with SPP, driving innovation in the industry. Market management projects are highly complex due to the need for energy scheduling, optimization calculations, financial settlements and compliance with regulatory demands.  We’re proud our technology meets SPP’s needs for performance, quality and flexibility.” said Karim El Naggar, Vice President of Alstom Grid’s Network Management Solutions business Vice President.