In December 2021, PSR signed a contract with Mexico’s Centro Nacional de Control de Energía (CENACE) as a provider of computational models for planning the expansion and operation of the country. These models will be used for integrated hydrothermal and renewable coordination in the medium and short term, considering uncertainties in inflows, in the production of renewable sources such as wind and solar, in energy demand, fuel prices and others. The models represent in detail the fundamental operating requirements for the Mexican system, such as operation’s sub hourly representation, “commitment” of thermal plants, limits on generation variation (“ramps”) and dynamic operating reserves to accommodate the variability of renewable production.

PSR’s model suite that was acquired includes SDDP (medium and long term operation planning), NCP (short term operation planning), OptGen (generation and interconnection expansion planning) and NetPlan (detailed transmission expansion).

Raphael Chabar, PSR’s executive director, explains that the company complied with all the strict technical and legal requirements during the selection and hiring process and highlights: “the signing of this contract represents an important milestone for the consolidation of PSR’s presence in Mexico, where we are consultants to several international and local investors, as well as banks, and it is a new recognition of the relevance of our tools in supporting complex decisions in the world energy scenario”.

The contract also includes complete and advanced training of CENACE’s team of engineers and consultants in the use of PSR tools, which covers all topics related to operation planning and expansion in general. During the first training stage, held in December 2021, PSR experts introduced the CENACE team to the theoretical concepts of the methodologies in addition to the practical aspects of using PSR tools. Engineer Ricardo Perez, one of the PSR instructors, comments “the CENACE team demonstrated high technical qualifications and interest in the tools. In the second stage, planned for March 2022, PSR will hold hands-on sessions focusing on modeling details for the best possible representation of the Mexican system, ensuring that the full methodological and computational potential of our optimization models is explored”.