Grid Upgrade

A Grid Upgrade lets you modify or upgrade your grid in several ways and compare the cost of these upgrade measures to determine which one leads to the desired outcome and lets you choose the most cost-efficient grid planning measures.

This can be useful if you:

• Have a pending Connection Request that can't be approved right away because there are violations, but it could be approved if Grid Upgrade measures were taken.
• Found a part of your grid to be particularly weak when running a Stress Test or Power Flow.
• Need to change the grid topology and want to evaluate the implications.
• Want to simulate a Grid Reconfiguration.

Setup

Previously created Grid Upgrades can be chosen and changed from the dropdown list.

A new Grid Upgrade can be created by clicking on .

A Grid Upgrade always needs to be named.

A Grid Upgrade can be deleted by selecting it from the dropdown list, clicking on and then .

the Grid Upgrade once finished.

INFO

A Grid Upgrade is always part of a Grid. Therefore a Grid Upgrade can only be selected from the dropdown list if a Grid is first chosen.

TIP

Multiple Grid Upgrades can be defined per grid.

Editing a Grid

Creating a Grid Upgrade works the same way as editing a grid in the Grid Editor.

Contrary to the grid editor, changes made to the grid as part of a grid upgrade are saved as a layer on top of the original grid and can thus be selected or deselected on any calculation page.

TIP

Modifying the grid with a Grid Upgrade is the preferred method over doing it in the Grid Editor.

INFO

Grid Upgrades can be locked to prevent any changes being made.

INFO

The consistency checker will automatically run when saving a grid upgrade and can be run manually by clicking the // button in the top right of the Grid Editor.

Status

Every grid upgrade has a status. Depending on the status, the grid upgrade will be considered by default when carrying out any static or time series based calculations in the software. The currently supported statuses are:

• Pending (OFF): This is the default status upon creating the grid update.
• Planned (ON)
• Cancelled (OFF)
• Pre-Aproved (ON)
• Under examination (OFF)
• Approved (ON)
• Approved with measures (ON)
• Built (ON)
• Closed (OFF)

Grid Upgrades with an ON-status are automatically applied during calculations while the ones with an OFF-status are not.

Grid Upgrade Overview

The Grid Upgrade Overview section lists all changes that are part of the current grid upgrade. Newly added components are listed under Additions, modified elements under Modifications and deleted elements under Removals.

Components are grouped by component type. The list can be expanded to show each individual compnent by clicking on show. Clicking on the individual component will center the grid viewer onto that component.

Costs

For each change you make in a grid upgrade, it is possible to add the purchase and installation costs in your configured currency and to define whether it is paid by the grid operator or a customer. Note that the costs are relative per km for lines and are absolute for all other grid elements. The resulting total costs of the grid upgrades are displayed for grid operator and customer separately as well as a grand total.

Component Overview

The component overview has the same functionality as in the Grid Editor and shows all electrical components of the grid.

It has an additional column to show the status of the components based on colors, as explained in Grid Upgrade Overview

Status	Description
	an attribute of the component was modified
	the component was deleted
	the component was added

and a column where the costs associated with the grid upgrade can be modified.

Grid Viewer

The functionality of the grid viewer is the same as in the Grid Editor page.

Components will be colored according to the same logic as before:

Status	Description
	an attribute of the component was modified
	the component was deleted
	the component was added

Show comparison

In addition to creating and editing grid upgrades, you can also compare them. Click on on the top of the page to enter the comparison mode.

On this page, you can either manually select which grid upgrades you would like to compare to each other, or click on to add all grid upgrades to the comparison, including the one you might be currently creating. This will create a section for each grid upgrade that contains the following information:

• Show on grid shows the grid upgrade in the grid viewer.
• Stress Test: Pie charts based on the Stress Test results. The amount of warnings and violations for each alert category is shown, providing a quick metric on the performance of the grid upgrade over all scenarios. The following stress test scenarios are applied:
  • Full load, full generation
  • Full load, no generation
  • No load, full generation
• Changed Grid Elements: The changes made to the grid are shown in a tabular format.
• Costs: The costs of the grid upgrade measures.
• Tags: The grid upgrades that are the most cost effective and that perform the best in the grid stress test (have the least amount of violations and warnings) are marked using a tag, indicating either Best cost or Best operation respectively. Note that you will need to select at least two grid upgrades for the tags to be shown.

Apply to grid

In case you want to permanently apply the changes made in a grid upgrade to your grid model, click on on the top of the page. Doing so will change your original grid and delete the grid upgrade afterwards.

INFO

Please note that this option is not available if your original grid is locked . In this case, set the status of the grid upgrade to Planned or Built if you want the grid upgrade to be acivated by default in your static and time-series based calculations.