Release of PowerWorld Simulator v24 Beta
All licensed PowerWorld users are invited to download and use a new beta release of PowerWorld Simulator v24. This beta release has several new features, but the main reason for this release is to allow our users to better handle the new ERCOT full-topology cases.
If you or your organization has not received an email with an invitation and credentials to download v24 beta, please contact us at support@powerworld.com to express your interest in downloading v24 beta and to receive your credentials.
If you or your organization do not need to use these new ERCOT cases, there is likely not a compelling reason to install the v24 beta release. Feel free to keep using v23 until the official version of v24 is released later this year. This is pre-release software, so please do not use this in a production environment without testing.
PowerWorld has been able to read full-topology (node-breaker) models for many years, and v23 can read in the new ERCOT cases. However, the new ERCOT cases use a different data structure than one would typically find in an EMS system. Specifically, bus numbers are fixed, which allows ERCOT to continue to use bus numbers (instead of labels) as the linkage between cases and contingency files.
The new v24 beta release of PowerWorld Simulator improves user interaction with this updated data structure. For information on the new features available related to these new ERCOT cases, please view our quick-start guide (see links below if needed).
One highlight to note: If your organization has the Integrated Topology Processing (ITP) add-on, you will be able to use and solve these cases directly. If your organization does not have the ITP add-on, there is a feature (described in the quick-start guide) that will allow you to save the ERCOT full-topology case as a “merged” case that you can then use as your base case without ITP.
Installation of this beta release should not require you to update your license key, either your software or hardware key. Those actions will only be required upon the installation of the release of v24 itself.
As you use these new features, please do keep in mind that this is a beta release, which means we are still working on new features in this version and the odds of bugs appearing are higher than normal in this beta. As always, we highly encourage you to report to us any issues that you see in this beta release, particularly those having to do with the ERCOT cases. We are also still working on complete documentation of these new features, so feel free to reach out with any questions.
In particular, we are still working on a smoother way of linking these new ERCOT cases to one-line diagrams. These features may be added to a future beta release, and will certainly be in the full v24 release.
Thanks as always for your continued support of PowerWorld Corporation. We look forward to hearing from you on these new features or any other topic.
Links:
https://www.powerworld.com/reading-new-ercot-cases-in-powerworld-simulator https://www.powerworld.com/download-purchase/software-patches