An open source tool for transmission system analysis and planning

The paper emphasizes the importance of open source software tools in transmission system analysis and planning, taking under consideration all three pillars of power system deregulation, i.e., congestion management, calculation of cross-border transits and balancing mechanism. An open source tool, named OpenTSPOT, was developed (in the framework of an EU FP7 research project) and presented in this paper capable to handle all crucial issues in the field of transmission system analysis and planning. OpenTSPOT using generation, load and network topology data in the standard UCTE—Data Exchange Format, enables the creation of regional transmission network models, performs load flow calculations and enables contingency analyses and statistical analysis of their results, integrating the necessary steps for Automated Network Modeling (Day Ahead Congestion Forecast—DACF, Two Day Ahead Congestion Forecast—D2CF and Intra Day Congestion Forecast—IdCF) into a semi-automated procedure. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, OpenTSPOT is the only available tool which contains a specially developed part for statistical data processing, something that is crucial in the decision making process.