The objective of the Genesys software is to assess the operational performance and supply reliability of large-scale, complex power systems. This is achieved through a very detailed replication of the actual system operation: Each simulation run starts with yearly planning, continues with week-ahead and day-ahead scheduling, and finishes with the actual (“true up”) operation for the first hour of the year. The simulation then advances to the next hour, with updated forecasts, and the long-term through short-term decision process is repeated to produce the second-hour “true up”; and so on for the year’s 8760 hours. The simulation runs are carried out for several thousand scenarios. The Genesys stochastic simulation process requires the solution of more than one hundred million large-scale mixed integer programming (MIP) problems in about 6 hours. This was achieved through a combination of efficient construction and solution of MIPs; distributed processing (16 thousand cores); and communication with other software layers. The application will be exemplified with a real case study of the US Pacific Northwest System.

This work presents a methodology to incorporate reliability constraints in the optimal power systems expansion planning problem. Besides LOLP and EPNS, traditionally used in power systems, this work proposes the utilization of the risk measures VaR (Value-at-Risk) and CVaR (Conditional Value-at-Risk), widely used in financial markets. The explicit consideration of reliability constraints in the planning problem can be an extremely hard task and, in order to minimize computational effort, this work applies the Benders' decomposition technique splitting the expansion planning problem into an investment problem and two sub-problems to evaluate the system's operation cost and the reliability index. The operation sub-problem is solved by Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming (SDDP) and the reliability sub-problem by Monte Carlo Simulation. The proposed methodology is applied to the real problem of optimal expansion planning of the Bolivian power system.

The technical director of the PSR Bernardo Bezerra presented "The perspectives of the Brazilian electric sector" at the opening of the IEEE PES Transmission and Distribution Conference and Exhibition - Latin America, which took place on Sptember 18th of 2018 in Peru.

PSR presents the HERA System for decision support on the selection of hydroelectric inventories in a Workshop promoted by Aneel The HERA System, developed by PSR with the support of a R&D from EDF do Brasil, was the main theme of the morning session of the 1st Workshop for Participatory Hydroelectric Inventories, promoted by ANEEL on September 20, 2018. (http://www.aneel.gov.br/sala-de-imprensa/-/asset_publisher/zXQREz8EVlZ6/content/id/17392249) HERA has received Engie’s international innovation award and has been used in Colombia, Mexico and Gabon in partnership with The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The event was attended by about 100 people, including representatives from environmental agencies, planning, operations, investors and academics, and was broadcast over the internet. The PSR team at the presentation was composed of PSR director Rafael Kelman, coordinator of the project, and engineers André Granville, Marcelo Metello, Luiz Rodolpho Albuquerque and Tarcísio Castro. Link to the workshop is below. The HERA section starts in 1 hour and 45 minutes from the video (in portuguese): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdiKh78ciZ0&feature=youtu.be