Apr 10, 2007
Open Systems International, Inc. (OSI) has been awarded a major contract by Great River Energy of Elk River, Minnesota to be the supplier of its next-generation Energy Management System (EMS) technology.
This project marks an important milestone for OSI, as Great River Energy will be its first customer to implement OSI's brand new state-of-the-art Graphical User Interface based on Microsoft's .NET technology. The new and innovative graphics architecture, OpenView.NET, is OSI's latest release of its flexible and open monarch™ platform, with many new features and functionality, including 3D visualization capability to increase operator efficiency.
Great River Energy is the second largest electric utility in the state of Minnesota and the fourth largest generation and transmission cooperative in the U.S. in terms of assets. Its 28 distribution cooperatives in Minnesota and Wisconsin distribute electricity to approximately 600,000 homes, businesses and farms. 21 of the utility's member cooperatives throughout the region will have staff operating their distribution networks through Great River Energy remote consoles. The majority of users have 8-5 operations with three users switching to Great River Energy for after hours coverage. Several users also run 24x7 operations from remote consoles.
Great River Energy's motivation for choosing OSI has been OSI's impeccable delivery performance, open and modern technology, and its unsurpassed customer service. The new system replaces a current system supplied by General Electric (GE). The new system is based on OSI's monarch distributed open architecture with an advanced Graphical User Interface based on Microsoft's .NET technology, and includes Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, Automatic Generation Control and Dispatch (AGC), Historical Information System, Transmission Network Analysis, Web-based Graphical User Interface, Operator Training Simulator and Secure ICCP communications, as well as capability for a hot standby backup/disaster recovery control system.
"We are elated by the decision Great River Energy has made to join our large family of users. Progressive utilities such as GRE are finding out with our technology and our business model they can run their business mission much more effectively in the face of ever-growing challenges. We welcome Great River Energy to our family and will do everything possible to exceed their expectations in every aspect," said Bahman Hoveida, President & CEO of OSI.
"We are excited about the move to the OSI system. Their open technology will give us flexibility in our choices of hardware, operating systems, and third party software and allow us to keep up to date with security and functional patches. OSI's ability to do system upgrades quickly will also allow us to keep the whole EMS up to date with current innovations and technology. All of these things will allow Great River Energy to meet NERC security standards and keep up with the quickly changing utility industry," said Ed Shellum, Supervisor, Computer System Support at Great River Energy.
"OSI has a proven track record for customer service. Great River Energy and our member cooperatives look forward to working closely with OSI on this project to enhance Great River Energy's ability to manage and operate our transmission system assets and our member cooperatives ability to manage and operate their distribution system assets. We are very excited about this project and becoming a member of the OSI family," added Dick Pursley, Manager, System Operations at Great River Energy.
Great River Energy (www.greatriverenergy.com), Elk River, Minn. is a not-for-profit generation and transmission cooperative providing electricity to 28 distribution cooperatives in Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is the second largest power supplier in the state of Minnesota, and the fourth largest cooperative of its type in the nation. It owns and operates Coal Creek and Stanton stations in North Dakota and a number of combustion turbine peaking plants in Minnesota. In addition to that, Great River Energy's generation resources include a refuse derived fuel plant and about 120MW of wind generation.
OSI (www.osii.com) provides open, state-of-the-art, and high-performance automation solutions to utilities worldwide. These solutions include Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Systems, Network Management Systems (NMS), Energy Management Systems (EMS), Distribution Management Systems (DMS) and Generation Management Systems (GMS), as well as individual software and hardware products and e-business solutions for utility operations. OSI is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
For additional information regarding this news release please contact news@osii.com.
