ALSTOM (Bellevue, Washington, U.S.) has successfully delivered a full turnkey energy management solution to manage the entire South Korean electricity power grid under a Euros 17 million contract with the country's utility, the Korea Power Exchange.

The New Energy Management System (NEMS), comprising all the hardware and software needed for the efficient and reliable management of the electricity supply to the country's 22 million people, was installed by ALSTOM over three years and completed on time this summer.

ALSTOM was contracted to provide a full turnkey solution for two energy management systems (EMS) for the main and backup control centers of the Korea Power Exchange, which is the fourth largest utility in the world with a total generating capacity of 52,000 MW.

NEMS is an energy management system with a full SCADA, generation and network analysis capability supported by a comprehensive historical information system. It has been adapted to the Korean environment and runs ALSTOM's e-terra^™ energy management suite of software.

In addition to the delivery of two e-terraplatform 2.1 UNIX EMS sites, ALSTOM also installed a Programmer Development System (PDS), a Dispatcher Training Simulator (DTS), all operator console furniture, three video display wall systems, a mosaic tile map board, an uninterruptible power supply for all control centre systems, and ICCP (Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol) connections to 11 regional control centers. As a final phase of the project, ALSTOM also upgraded and synchronized the utility's production interim system and software with that of the backup control center and DTS systems so all hardware and software platforms were 100% compatible.

The PDS was the first delivery and was equipped with all the NEMS platform software, allowing the utility to build and test databases and displays in preparation for the cutover of the NEMS. The DTS is fitted with the same software as the real-time system, which allows the Korea Power Exchange to examine various real-life scenarios for both power-system planning and operator-training purposes.

Prior to the final shipment of the NEMS to Seoul, the ALSTOM team carried out an exhaustive factory acceptance testing process followed by a 16-week site acceptance test and a 1500-hour availability test. These tests concluded that system reliability was 99.99% or better, meaning that it will continue to operate even under the most extreme situations.
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