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Invensys implementing InFusion-based Generation Management System for Williams Power

Posted 06 July 2006

Invensys implementing InFusion-based Generation Management System for Williams Power



System to provide foundation for wide area real time production monitoring and dispatch control of all Williams’ generation assets

Williams Power has selected Invensys to implement an InFusion-based Generation Management System (GMS) for its fleet of electrical generation assets. These assets include two company-owned power plants and six contracted facilities located across seven states.

The new system will integrate data from many different automation systems and applications to help Williams precisely schedule the delivery of generation capacity from each plant according to changing demand from contracted markets.

The GMS will monitor demand trend data by communicating with the three contracted ISO (Independent System Transmission Operator) organizations that serve California (CAISO), the Midwest (MISO) and Mid-Atlantic states (PJM). In the competitive deregulated generation market, the ISOs are responsible for monitoring and directing the flow of wholesale electric power into and throughout the distribution grids that serve their regional markets.

Having all plant data and market demand data in a centralized business decision support environment will allow Williams to provide set point dispatch control for production from the generating plants on an hourly basis. This real time scheduling will help prevent shortfalls in capacity, as well as the generation of too much electricity, minimizing economic risk in the business and optimizing the production value of each Williams generation asset.

The new system will be engineered using new modular power industry applications created in the InFusion Engineering Environment. This will allow these applications to be deployed on different automation systems across the Williams generation fleet.

InFusion Access and Historian will collect and model data from a variety of device types at the eight power plants, constantly comparing the production data in real time with customer demand trend data from the ISOs throughout each day. The InFusion View graphical user interface and SuiteVoyager for InFusion Web portal will provide a local human machine interface (HMI) for operator visualization and provide authorized managers with secure remote access to GMS information.

Invensys will implement the Williams GMS connection to the regional ISOs using a LiveData server using ICCP (Inter-Control Center Protocol), which enables real-time bi-directional flow of remote data across multiple protocols.

The Invensys Generation Management System replaces an existing SCADA system. The new Infusion-based system will provide Williams Power with a more flexible, easier-to-deploy, standards-based data acquisition and business decision support platform that will be able to adapt to future changes in asset configuration and energy market characteristics.

The Invensys GMS implementation builds on more than a dozen years of prior Invensys experience with units of the Williams Companies. Williams has Foxboro I/A Series automation systems installed at seven gas processing sites.

About Williams Power

Williams Power, a unit of the Williams Companies, buys and sells energy commodities (including electricity, natural gas and refined petroleum products) and provides risk management services primarily to wholesale utility and industrial users in North America. Williams Power manages 7,900 megawatts of electricity and 2.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.
Williams, through its subsidiaries, primarily finds, produces, gathers, processes and transports natural gas. The company also manages a wholesale power business. Williams’ operations are concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountains, Gulf Coast, Southern California and Eastern Seaboard. More information can be found at www.williams.com.