Many of you know Robert R. (Bob) Richwine from his many years of working in the electric power generating industry, first as the chief consulting Reliability Engineer for Southern Company’s regulated and unregulated businesses and since 2002 as an independent reliability management consultant. Others may not know him but whether you know him or not you should take a look at his website to answer a question you should be asking “Why should I be interested in what Bob Richwine has to say?”

He has two case studies that you will find interesting and gives you insight on how to get the most from your Generating Availability Data System (GADS) data:

1. Is Your Power Plant Headed for a HILP? : How to Avoid, Detect and Mitigate High Impact – Low Probability (HILP) Events
2. Optimizing Economics : Maximizing availability may not optimize plant economics

Click on this link for more details:  http://richwineconsulting.com/

Our hosting company for our website was the target of a (very, very large) distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack.

Everything should now be up and running as before.

Our GADS Open Source software has been included in the New York State Reliability Council’s Policy No. 5-8 - Procedure for Establishing New York Control Area Installed Capacity Requirements (see attached or go to http://www.nysrc.org/policies.asp )

"The multi-state model for each unit is derived from the collection of forced and partial outages that occur over the most recent five-year period using benchmarked GADS Open Source (OS) software as described in Appendix E."

Search the document for “GADS”, but pay specific attention to Appendix E - Development of Generator Transition Rate Matrices for MARS that are Consistent with the EFORd Reliability Index

Beginning on page 33 and continuing on page 34:

“In order to generate the metrics needed to populate the transition rate matrices for the generating units modeled in MARS, the above methodology was coded into the GADS Open Source software package but modified as described above. The GADS Open Source (GADS OS) is the software utilized by the NYISO to analyze generator performance data. It is used to calculate the generator performance indexes used in determining a generator’s UCAP value and, now, for developing the transition rates that are used in the MARS model. GADS OS allows electric generating companies to collect and report validated GADS performance data and event data. GADS OS can be found at this link:

“ http://gadsopensource.com/

“GADS OS, written by industry veteran Ron Fluegge, consists of two open source applications— GADS OS Data Entry and GADS OS Analysis & Reporting to analyze the GADS data. Besides the use of this software for submittal of GADS data to NERC and the NYISO, the software is also used for submittal of data to the ISO New England, PJM, and the MISO.”

Final POLICY 5-8 approved July 11 2014 v.2.pdf (811.67 kb)