Transpower in New Zealand has launched a new system to manage the electricity market and control the flow of electricity on the national grid.

Transpower commissioned a new market system on July 21, replacing a 13 year-old system, which at the time was an internationally pioneering market system.

Kieran Devine, general manager of System Operations, said the new system is vital to efficiently managing the flow of electricity around New Zealand.

“The new systems provide Transpower with new, accurate, real time information. This means we can use more accurate assumptions when modelling the power system, which results in greater efficiencies within the grid,” Devine said. “The system coordinators are better equipped to deal with out of the ordinary events on the system if they have all the necessary and accurate data at their fingertips.”

Transpower anticipates the more efficient management of the system has the potential to increase the grid’s effective capacity.

“Ours took over a year longer than anticipated when we started the project four years ago, but now it is being regarded internationally as a very effective and successful implementation," Devine said..

The project was complex because Transpower needed a high-performance, real time system that had to integrate with a large number of other systems.

A large number of diverse technical specialists were required, covering power systems, market systems, software development, IT integration, testing and project management disciplines. At any one time there were 50 to 100 people working on the project located in a number of offices, including a vendor team based in the United States.