XM Debuts High-Tech National Electric Grid Control Center in Medellin
Medellin-based national electric-power grid operator and wholesale trading center XM announced July 5 the debut of an ultra-high-tech control center that will help maintain and improve power reliability and rationality for all Colombia.
According to XM, the new control center is “the most modern of [all] America, with technological platforms of latest generation, ensuring that during [at least] the next 12 years [we can meet] the challenges of the operation and integrated control of the resources of the Sistema Interconectado Nacional [SIN, the national power grid.]”
The new control center also includes two high-tech training rooms that “allow [trainees] to simulate in real time the operation of the entire SIN in a controlled environment,” according to XM.
“We monitor and control around 26,000 electrical variables measured throughout the depth and width of the national geography, employing multi-site technology for the continuous operation and phase measurement as well as maximum observability of the network, identifying [power-disruption] phenomena impossible to detect with traditional technologies,” according to the company.
XM’s system coordinates 66.89 terawatt-hours/year of power production and dispatch, involving more than 55,000 coordinated power moves annually by 112 players in the Colombian power market, including 74 power generators, 60 centrally-dispatched plants, 146 non-centrally-dispatched plants, 16 power transmitters, 32 power wholesalers, 26,000 kilometers of 110-kilovolt power lines, 249 power substations and the power interconnection with Ecuador.
“The new control center of the National Dispatch System will have two updates of hardware and software every four years, which will guarantee the latest available versions and will ensure the best technology to meet the challenges of the operation, maintainance and integrated control of the SIN until 2030,” XM added.
“The global electricity industry is facing one of its biggest changes [in history] and Colombia is not immune to this reality,” said XM general manager María Nohemi Arboleda.
“For this reason it is essential to have very strong institutions that incorporate new elements and actors in the most appropriate and harmonious ways possible. At XM we have been developing initiatives and projects for several years that point in that direction — and the new control center that we are inaugurating today is proof of this,” Arboleda added.
