20150812AVU to Staff 51.doc

AVISTA CORPORATION
RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

JURISDICTION: IDAHO DATE PREPARED: 08/03/2015
CASE NO.: AVU-E-15-05/AVU-G-15-01 WITNESS: Bryan Cox
REQUESTER: IPUC RESPONDER: Brad Calbick
TYPE: Production Request DEPARTMENT: Transmission Operations
REQUEST NO.: Staff - 051 TELEPHONE: [phone]

REQUEST:

Please describe the Company’s situational awareness of the transmission system beyond the Company’s Balancing Authority Area. If the Company does not participate in Peak RC’s Advanced Applications program for Real Time Contingency Analysis training for Operators, does it plan to in the future? If so, please provide the costs to the Company to obtain situational awareness over the past three years and projected into the future. Please explain how the Company evaluates the benefits and costs of the available programs used to maintain situational awareness.

RESPONSE:

The Company receives power system operational information via Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol (ICCP) from 9 regional utilities, the Peak RC, and the EHV data pool. A total of 1233 analog values and 376 digital values are received in real-time via ICCP and presented to Operators for situational awareness.

The company also receives situational awareness information from other control centers through emails delivered via the WECCNet messaging system. Each control center in the western interconnection has a WECCnet messaging computer by which it can send and receive situational awareness messages to and from other control centers.

Both ICCP and WECCnet communications utilize AT&T network infrastructure which is commonly referred to as the Energy Communications Network (ECN).

The company does participate in Peak RC's Hosted Advanced Applications program for Real Time Contingency Analysis. The company's participation in Peak RC's Hosted Advanced Applications program began in 2014.

The costs to obtain situational awareness of the transmission system beyond the Company's Balancing Authority Area over the past three years have been:
2012
ICCP vendor system support & maintenance: $9,400
ECN network fees: $13,600
2013
ICCP vendor system support & maintenance: $8,300
ECN network fees: $13,600
WECCnet computer upgrade: $7,200
2014
ICCP vendor system support & maintenance: $8,600
ECN network fees: $13,700
ICCP datalink upgrade: $43,000
Peak RC Hosted Advanced Applications implementation: $219,000
These costs do not include the staff time spent to provide routine support, database updates, and maintenance as these have not been tracked separately from other similar control center support activities.

The projected future costs to obtain situational awareness of the transmission system beyond the Company's Balancing Authority Area are:
2015
ICCP vendor system support & maintenance: $8,900
ECN telecom fees: $13,900
Peak RC Hosted Advanced Applications support and maintenance: $101,000
2016
ICCP vendor system support & maintenance: $9,300
ECN telecom fees: $14,000
Peak RC Hosted Advanced Applications support and maintenance: $102,000
2017
ICCP vendor system support & maintenance: $9,700
ECN telecom fees: $14,200
Peak RC Hosted Advanced Applications support and maintenance: $103,000

Avista evaluated the benefits of the Peak RC Hosted Advanced Applications versus developing a Real Time system model and contingency analysis in-house. Developing and maintaining such an application would have required several additional FTE, and the ultimate product would have been very similar, if not identical to, the Peak RC Hosted Advanced Applications.

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