ERCOT opts for Aurora SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 25,

SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 25, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EPIS announced today that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT) has chosen Aurora to provide a production cost and generation capacity expansion modeling solution. The decision to adopt Aurora came after an open review of interested vendors and comprehensive testing.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power to 24 million Texas customers, representing approximately 90 percent of the state's electric load. As the Independent System Operator (ISO) for the region, ERCOT schedules power on an electric grid that connects more than 46,000 miles of transmission lines and over 550 generation units. ERCOT also performs financial settlement for the competitive wholesale bulk-power market and administers retail switching for 7 million premises in competitive choice areas. ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation governed by a board of directors and subject to oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas Legislature. Additional information about ERCOT can be found at http://www.ercot.com/ . 

“We are very pleased to be working with ERCOT,” added Ben Thompson, CEO of EPIS. “In addition to the broad range of functionality ERCOT needs, the organization also emphasized practical needs like ‘ease of use’ and ‘ease of data manipulation’. Aurora is an ideal match to address those.”

ERCOT was looking for software that evaluates commitment, dispatch, and maintenance decisions on timescales that match real-world decision processes and information flows (year-ahead to minutes). In addition to more than 40 specific features and capabilities, the solution selected needed to be able to analyze:

• The capabilities of generation fleet and load resources to respond to uncertain and variable system conditions (e.g. renewable power output and system load)
• Impact from more frequent ramping and start/stop cycling on conventional generation and the system’s ability to satisfy reliability metrics under such operation
• The provision and use of new ancillary services (AS)
• The operational and reliability implications of renewable resource forecast inaccuracies and interval-by-interval output changes
• The ability of the generation fleet to provide fast-ramping capabilities under different system conditions with different commitment and dispatch lead times relevant for the ERCOT market
• The cost and resource mix impacts of pending and future emission standards
• Costs and benefits of new technologies, (e.g. energy storage with different characteristics and constraints)
• The benefits of transmission system improvement projects

For the past 20 years, Aurora has had a reputation for being a best-in-class power market modeling solution, backed by unmatched support. It is known for the broad range of modeling and forecasting it can support and can do the job of several solutions. With its advanced architecture, more efficient algorithms, and extensive use of threading, it continues to lead the field in speed and performance. With the ability to model long-term capacity expansion, complete nodal SCUC/SCOPF for transmission analysis, hydro, wind, solar and storage, Aurora helps clients to position themselves for success in a changing marketplace.

About EPIS EPIS, LLC ( www.epis.com ) is the developer of Aurora, the leading-edge software for forecasting wholesale power market prices. The company also provides ready-to-use data for the United States and Canada, Mexico and Europe, and unrivaled customer support to its growing body of customers worldwide. A variety of organizations -- including utilities (large and small), independent power producers (IPPs), developers, traders, energy consultants, independent system operators (ISOs), regulatory agencies and universities -- use AURORA to model power system dispatch and the formation of both nodal and zonal wholesale power prices, and to perform a wide range of associated analytics over the short- and long-term. Aurora is a comprehensive solution to power market modeling needs. Offices are located in Salt Lake City, UT, Tigard, OR and Sandpoint, ID.