Columbia Vista implemented for Bonneville Power Administration

The Columbia River and its main tributary the Snake River have a drainage area of over 250,000 square miles, extending through the Pacific North West and into Canada. Within the basin are over 250 reservoirs and over 150 hydroelectric projects. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is responsible for operating the system in accordance with business objectives, and within constraints imposed by many other uses for the river system, among them fisheries, flood control, recreation, navigation and irrigation.

Synexus Global was selected in 2000 to develop an enhanced version of their widely-used Vista Decision Support System in order to give BPA advanced modeling capabilities for the entire Columbia River system. Columbia Vista includes integrated software modules to undertake optimum long-term planning, optimum short-term scheduling, near real-time dispatch (NRTO) and off-line studies. Seventy-four different hydro projects are explicitly modeled, together with 45 system constraints.