Red Eléctrica and Elewit develop platform for modelling Spain’s transmission network

The Casandra platform is being developed as an advanced transmission planning tool by Spanish TSO Red Eléctrica and its technology partner Elewit.

Casandra aims to be a comprehensive solution to streamline the network planning process as it becomes increasingly complex with the transition to a decarbonised and decentralised energy system.

With the requirement for new tools and to avoid the practice of modifying existing software to adapt to the changing needs, the companies report the Casandra solution as being designed from scratch with the functionalities and data processing capacity to respond to the challenges, both now and into the future.

One of the software tools highlighted is ‘Newton’, which was developed internally within Red Eléctrica for calculating power flows in the electricity networks. The solution is updated with algorithms reflecting the state of the art in power flows and features linear calculation among other essential functions.

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Another is REEview, which is a graphical viewer and editor of the electricity networks with line diagrams that allow integration of third-party data.

Alongside these, several web portals have been developed.

The portal for interaction with external stakeholders is intended to facilitate collaboration and communication and serve as an entry point for planning proposals and allegations as well as a location to publish current planning.

The planning portal, which is the operational core of the planning process, provides the tools to view current plans, edit future plans, manage versions between users, generate reports and perform cost-related calculations.

The portal for editing, visualisation and model simulation serves as a repository to edit, visualise and compare power grid models. Users are able to create, simulate and compare different future scenarios, which is essential for informed decision-making.

Currently, the Casandra project is still in development with various modules in different phases of evolution and incorporating both internal and external developments.

Among the external developments, which are underway jointly with the consulting firm Apogea, is a data aggregation portal for planning and comparing different future scenarios, which is expected to be completed before year-end.

In addition, a specialised database to allow managing multiple versions of the electricity network with change control is expected to be ready during the first half of 2024.