Welcome to GADS Open Source™ Support!
Software Discontinuation Notice
Thank you for using our GADS software as your tool to collect, report and analyze GADS data.
After 35+ years of helping people use and report GADS data, the GADS Open Source software will be officially retired and support for the software will be discontinued on December 31, 2025.
By providing early notification of the discontinuance, you should have ample time to transition to alternative GADS software.
As the Manager of the Availability Support group for Texas Utilities, my first experience with collecting GADS data in 1986 was using 80-column
paper FORTRAN coding forms and punched cards while sending NERC our GADS files on magnetic tape. In the 1980s, I took advantage of the new IBM PC/XT,
the CA Clipper programming language, and dBASE III to create the original MicroGADS to run under MS-DOS. The software went through many iterations,
product names, and owners over the years; finally, becoming GADS Open Source in 2011.
To work on a product with such broad impact with users around the world has been nothing but humbling; however, being in the power business for more than 50 years, it is time to retire and let others provide you with new software products.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause your facility. We appreciate your business and hope this notice provides you with adequate time to plan for an alternative software solution.
GADS/OS software gives generating companies tools to take control of their mandatory GADS reporting to NERC and the various
ISOs.
GADS/OS is a set of free and open source software tools and is licensed under the
GNU General Public License Version 2 (GNU GPL or simply GPL) which is the most widely
used free software license.
GADS/OS is in use at a wide range of generating companies, both domestically and
internationally, from single-plant sites to larger generating companies with hundreds of generating units.
In planning a transition to alternative GADS software, we are proud to refer our users to Integ’s PowerGADS solution for all of their on-going GADS Software needs. Integ is the country’s leading GADS Software Solution provider.
Conventional Generation
- GADS/OS Data Entry
NERC developed the GADS Data Reporting Instructions to assist utility personnel in reporting information to the
Generating Availability Data System (GADS). The GADS Data Reporting Instructions detail
the data elements collected by GADS, data identified by the industry as being vital to the understanding and
interpretation of generating unit and major equipment performance. By following the strict guidelines set
forth in these instructions, we have found that the industry analysts can best apply the data in the most beneficial manner.
GADS/OS Data Entry allows you to collect and report validated GADS performance data
and event data (including outage, derating, non-curtailing, and reserve shutdown
events plus special synchronous condensing and pumping operation event types) in
standard formats required by NERC GADS and all major ISOs.
GADS data is collected for all major generating unit components—such as the boiler,
nuclear reactor, heat recovery steam generator (HRSG), combustion turbine/jet engine,
steam turbine, and generator—and other plant systems, subsystems, and components.
User tutorial: GADS/OS 101 Data Entry Reporting 
Automate NERC GADS Reporting using Integ’s PowerGADS - The leading GADS Tool in the country.
- GADS/OS Analysis & Reporting
GADS/OS Analysis & Reporting allows you to calculate industry-standard performance
measures for reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM) assessments and
key performance indicators (KPIs) using the GADS data for your generating units
as the basis for those calculations.
Measures of generating unit performance — such as Availability Factor (AF), Equivalent
Availability Factor (EAF), Forced Outage Rate (FOR), Equivalent Forced Outage Rate
(EFOR), Equivalent Demand Forced Outage Rate (EFORd), and Starting Reliability — have been defined, recorded, and utilized by
the electric power industry for more than 50 years. The statistics can be calculated
with and without OMC events from granularities as fine as hourly and daily to as
coarse as yearly or longer.
In addition to more than 47 standard built-in reports, you can also add user-created reports
built with SAP's Crystal Reports to the Analysis & Reporting reports list and
run them from within the Program. Exporting to Excel is built into the Program and
is always available to create simple, as well as easy, ad hoc reports.
Variable Energy Resource (VER) Wind And Solar Generation
- GADS/OS Wind™ - Data Entry / Analysis & Reporting
- GADS/OS Solar™ - Data Entry / Analysis & Reporting
Software Design Changes for 2024
The upcoming changes underscore the necessity for more detailed data reporting with a significantly enhanced user interface and updated and new database tables as well as a new upload data file format (XML) for wind and solar units.
Up until 2024, Wind GADS required a Component Record to be uploaded for each sub-group. Starting in 2024, plants will be required to upload an Event Report instead. This report is entirely different in what it contains and at what level the data are collected. This location is where the Contributing Operating Condition is entered.
Additionally, there were also changes to simplify the Configuration Data report and an overall addition of Energy Storage reporting for co-located facilities for Wind and Solar sites.
In 2024, NERC expands its renewable dataset by starting a separate process to capture Solar GADS information. Starting on January 1, 2024, you’ll need to change how you report your NERC GADS units. You’ll have to start reporting those units through the new GADS Solar process if you have large solar plants with a combined Inverter Group Installed Capacity of 100 MW or more.
This process is entirely new, and the Contributing Operating Conditions are built in from the beginning.
As of September 1, 2024, NERC has not released official detailed specifications or details for:
- Wind and Solar GADS data upload XML file formats - XML Schema Definition XSD documents
- Wind and Solar GADS event data export XML file formats from the OATI web interface for importing into the GADS OS software
- Reporting of multiple cause codes for a single event and how to designate which cause code is primary or secondary
- Sample data files in order for us to test data uploading using the new User Interface at OATI
The current reporting deadline is November 15, 2024 for Q1, Q2 and Q3 2024 Wind and Solar GADS data.;
Without the above as of September 1, 2024,
there is not sufficient time to implement and test the code changes prior to the reporting deadline.
We are therefore forced to cancel all further work to incorporate any of the above changes,
to discontinue the GADS/OS Wind and Solar software, and to end all support of the Wind and Solar software as of September 1, 2024.
Recommended Implementation
GADS/OS is installed as a Windows-client application on individual
user machines, on a virtual machine/desktop, or on a network (shared) drive.
You can learn more about GADS by downloading the GADS Data Reporting Instructions (conventional generation) and the GADS Wind Turbine Generation Data Reporting Instructions at NERC. A video is also available entitled: "Introduction to GADS" (4m 11s) by NERC on Vimeo.
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