Distribution planning and circuit analysis for electric grid

Synergi Electric is a comprehensive circuit analysis and modelling software program for power distribution engineers. Synergi Electric models the power system, including detailed loads and generation, from substation to customer.

Advanced modelling solution 

Power distribution companies are facing ever increasing challenges to provide safe, reliable and cost-effective energy solutions. Advanced modelling solutions such as Synergi Electric are needed to cope with new regulations, distributed generation, new technologies and extreme weather events. With Synergi Electric you can better understand the performance of your system, as it provides you with the intelligence you need to make decisions that drive business performance, safety and reliability, while mitigating risk.

Analysis tools for planning 

Synergi Electric incorporates a full suite of analysis tools to perform short and long-term planning studies. Demand levels, voltages, loading and spare capacity can be evaluated each hour of every day over 12 months or 10 years. It includes tools for load allocation, phase balancing, capacitor placement, PV placement and load balancing. 

Renewables and Distributed Energy Resources (DER) 

Models for PV and wind generation are easy to set up in Synergi Electric. Load-flow, fault analysis, hosting capacity and time-series analyses evaluate the impact of these generators. Time and weather conditions are modelled in Synergi Electric to represent real world output of PV generators, combined with detailed load models that provide the most accurate representation of your distribution system. Synergi Electric also models large battery energy storage systems and a variety of control models.

System protection 

Synergi Electric provides an advanced modelling environment for over-current protective devices and allows engineers to quickly evaluate and manage the extensive and complex protection schemes for hundreds or thousands of distribution feeders. Synergi Electric includes numerous fault applications, including Fault Flow, Fault Voltage, Fault Sequence, PV Fault and Fault Location Analysis. Fault location analysis assists you in quickly troubleshooting outages by accurately predicting the location of fault events and momentary outages. 

Load growth, customer behaviour, switching configurations and changing facilities are all part of the environment in Synergi Electric and important to protection studies.

Reliability analysis 

Reliability metrics are indicators of the value that customers realize through their utility service and are a key concern for power distribution engineers. Outage events are brought into Synergi Electric where they are correlated and used to calculate the performance indices of the base system. You can see root causes of reliability problems, the impact of new or relocated reclosers and switches and evaluate mitigation strategies. While making changes to protection, switching, and loading, you can evaluate the impact of your proposed changes on reliability. 

Synergi Electric has a full suite of tools for capacity planning including: switch assessment, throw-over analysis, optimal switching, load transfer analysis, switch plan analysis, auto-transfer analysis, outage pick up, load at risk, and feeder tie path analysis.

Data services (data integration and automation) and Solver 

Synergi Electric provides tools to integrate with external data sources. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to develop distribution system models. Automated model build processes are used to ensure that the user always has a current model of the distribution system. Additional data sources can be included, such as: 

• The Customer Management Module (CMM) provides a link to the utility’s billing system 
• Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) can be used to import a specific loading condition from a known date and time 
• Middlelink and Model Forge tools can be used to interface with records of distributed generation
• Results from load forecasting studies can be imported to Synergi Electric using the Forecast tool 

DNV’s Consulting team has helped many utilities to implement these processes, providing a fully customized model build solution with all data required for distribution engineers to carry out their analyses. DNV’s team has the experience and knowledge to insure your models are built to the requirements that Synergi Electric needs and allows them to focus on the analysis rather than gathering the data.

Synergi Electric Viewer 

Synergi Electric Viewer allows data technicians to QA/QC models and work with data with a view-only license. Viewer has the same data and view capabilities without load flow or other analysis features.