OSI to supply Energy Management System to Seattle City Light

March 9, 2015 - Open Systems International (OSI) has been awarded a contract by Seattle City Light to implement a state-of-the-art new Energy Management System (EMS) based on OSI’s monarch platform.

Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States. It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to about 750,000 Seattle area residents. City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.

The EMS system is based on OSI’s monarch (Multi-platform Open Network ARCHitecture) platform and includes OSI’s next-generation, .NET based Graphical User Interface, large scale SCADA functionality, Generation Management System applications, Transmission Management applications including Advanced Transmission Security Monitoring Analysis functionality, State Estimation, Contingency Analysis and Operator Training Simulator. The new system replaces a legacy Siemens EMS system implemented in the 1990s.

“Seattle City Light is pleased to select OSI to implement our new Energy Management System,” said Phil West, the utility’s energy delivery and customer care officer. “We went through a rigorous selection process and OSI is the best match for our vision of smart grid technology. We look forward to successful implementation of the new EMS, as well as future smart grid projects so we can provide the best service to our customers.”

“OSI is pleased to have the trust of such a progressive and innovative US utility in adopting our advanced technology and we welcome them into our ever-expanding user family. Seattle City Light’s vision for the Utility of the Future and their progressive plans for smart grid implementation is in line with OSI’s technologies. We look forward to a successful project implementation and a long-term partnership with Seattle City Light to serve their strategic smart grid technology needs,” said Bahman Hoveida, OSI’s President and CEO.

Seattle City Light is a publicly owned utility that operates a generation, transmission and distribution system to serve over 400,000 customers living in the City of Seattle, WA and parts of its metropolitan area. Currently, the generation portfolio is approximately 2,000 MW and mostly hydro (92 percent) that relies on City of Light’s own seven hydro-electric power plants located over the following rivers: Pend Oreille (Boundary Dam), Skagit, Cedar and Tolt. City Light’s power generation resources are connected with its service territory via 650 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and more than 2,500 miles of overhead and underground distribution lines. City of Light is part of the Western Interconnection and participates in the Northwest Power Pool (NWPP).

OSI 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), Outage Management Systems (OMS), Generation Management Systems (GMS), Substation Automation Systems (SA); Data Warehousing and Historians, as well as individual software and hardware products and Smart Grid solutions for utility operations. OSI is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.