Gridforce Energy Management ROC
For more than 20 years, Gridforce Energy Management has been on the cutting edge of a changing industry. Originally envisioned as a fleet management organization optimizing power plant dispatch across multiple markets, Gridforce quickly expanded to Balancing Authority services. Since 1999, Gridforce has certified almost 50 Balancing Authorities, including industry-leading work in management of load-only and generation-only Balancing Authorities with a focus on renewables integration.
In its next evolution, NERC registration of generator interconnection facilities as Transmission Operators offered Gridforce the opportunity to expand its core services to include transmission operations as a service for its existing generation Balancing Authority customer base, leading to standalone transmission operator services for a variety of customer types. In this role, Gridforce oversees daily operations, power flow monitoring, and switching activities for transmission facilities across multiple footprints, including both generator interconnection facilities and small municipal transmission systems serving load. Gridforce provides regulatory compliance support for all of these rolls, with a team of experts whose exposure to the full life-cycle of Balancing Authority and Transmission Operator certification and compliance audits provides a deep and broad expertise.
This diverse array of critical operational roles – deployed across five NERC regions and touching multiple organized markets, reserve sharing groups and Regional Entities – gives Gridforce unparalleled insights into the needs and challenges of BES participants of all types, from Load Serving Entities to Reliability Coordinators. Leveraging this multi-tiered view into grid operations, Gridforce is well equipped to step into its next critical operational model, offering fully integrated Remote Operations Center services for enhanced situational awareness, coordination and oversight of remote asset operation and dispatch.
From its ROC Control Center in downtown Houston, GEM monitors and controls startup and shutdown of remote generation assets, monitors and controls for emissions, water quality and other critical plant systems, coordinates with market participants, plant personnel and reliability entities, and provides outage management and market portal/market offer support services, all managed by a team of experts with deep experience across a variety of Bulk Electric System roles.
By integrating ROC services into its existing model, Gridforce is able to offer an exceptional level of operational expertise, technical support and security. The Gridforce ROC services model leverages existing teams and infrastructure, designed, and deployed for the rigors of Balancing Authority and Transmission Operator functions, while building on and expanding them. This ensures that ROC assets get the benefit of a team of experts well versed in BES roles such as power plant commissioning and operation, transmission system design and operation, power marketing and trading, Balancing Authority dispatch, reserve sharing group operation, Human Machine Interface operation, outage management, and compliance management, among others.
The GEM ROC is housed in a controlled environment designed and deployed to meet the security needs of a CIP compliant Balancing Authority and Transmission Operator Control Center, including ready-hot Backup Control Center functionality and fully redundant systems to ensure 24/7/365 monitoring and control. A team of experts with deep experience in Energy Management System engineering, applications engineering, network administration and both Physical and Electronic Security Perimeter design and maintenance provides around-the-clock support for all of these environments.
With the depth and breadth of Gridforce’s experience as an industry leader across multiple BES roles, Gridforce’s teams and systems are “over-built” for ROC services, going above and beyond requirements and expectations typical of such a role. Gridforce’s integrated understanding of grid operations from multiple vantage points offer additional flexibility and insight, allowing ROC customers to leverage an unparalleled well of experience and expertise. This expertise positions Gridforce to provide creative solutions for unusual problems, leading to an industry-wide reputation as a team that just gets things done. In the ever-changing environment of the electric utility industry, flexibility and dependability are critical, and Gridforce ROC services lead the industry in both.