SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 01, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Power market modeling, forecasting and analysis took a leap forward today with the release of Aurora 13.0. The latest version of EPIS’s flagship product features a newly redesigned user interface and powerful new capabilities that will allow users to have more flexibility and accomplish more. The underlying architecture of Aurora has also been enhanced, setting the stage for faster development timelines, more enhancements and the ability to be responsive to customer feedback as well as changes in the marketplace.
To prepare for the new release, EPIS dedicated nearly a year to the new user interface to make commonly used features more accessible, give users more flexibility and customizability, and ultimately, to increase users’ productivity. During the process, the development team and company executives actively worked with a number of customers to ensure that the improvements were both intuitive and practical, and that desired functionality was easy to work with.
In addition to the many improvements to the user interface, v13.0 also includes a number of new, significant capabilities. These enhancements span both zonal and nodal functionality, include massive performance improvements for multi‐year studies, and give users greater control over resource dispatch and price formation.
“This release of Aurora reflects the dawn of another new era, where power systems are increasingly complex—characterized by significant penetrations of renewable generation, a wider variety of generation technologies, more operational constraints, more sophisticated load shapes, and greater policy uncertainty,” said Ben Thompson, CEO of EPIS. “The release of v13.0 further establishes the commitment at EPIS to help customers succeed. Because of these changes, EPIS recently re‐branded Aurora’s logo, dropped the ‘xmp’ and is pleased to release AURORA v13.0.”
Aurora 13.0 includes:
- An updated user interface, allowing users to quickly access the most frequently used features, the ability to customize the user’s view, more intuitive forms and the ability to monitor key statistics in real time.
- Increased flexibility with table-level custom columns, making results reporting even easier.
- The ability to parallelize multi-year simulations, drastically decreasing run times for more complex zonal studies that span multiple years.
- Long-Term Capacity Expansion enhancements so users can now have more control over capacity payments, renewable resources, and build priority.
- Nodal analysis updated include improved islanding logic, which offers the ability to include all buses in a system with multiple islands, the option to set an alternate Contingency Shadow Price Cap and aggregate area reporting.
- Enhanced resource definition and control, including: more options for ramp rates and bidding assignments.
- New constraint options, including: minimum fuel usage, imported emissions and net or one-way link constraints.
For more than 20 years, Aurora has had a reputation for being a best-in-class power market modeling solution, backed by unmatched support. It is known for the broad range of modeling and forecasting it can support and can do the job of several solutions. With its advanced architecture, more efficient algorithms and extensive use of threading, it continues to lead the field in speed and performance. With the ability to model long-term capacity expansion, complete nodal SCUC/SCOPF for transmission analysis, hydro, wind, solar and storage modeling, Aurora helps clients to position themselves for success in a changing marketplace.
About EPIS
EPIS, LLC (www.epis.com) is the developer of Aurora, the leading-edge software for forecasting wholesale power market prices. The company also provides ready-to-use data for the United States and Canada, Mexico and Europe, and unrivaled customer support to its growing body of customers worldwide. A variety of organizations-including utilities (large and small), independent power producers (IPPs), developers, traders, energy consultants, independent system operators (ISOs), regulatory agencies and universities-use AURORA to model power system dispatch and the formation of both nodal and zonal wholesale power prices, and to perform a wide range of associated analytics over the short- and long-term. Aurora is a comprehensive solution to power market modeling needs. Offices are located in Salt Lake City, UT, Tigard, OR and Sandpoint, ID.