French firm eyes upgrade of Transco control center

A French consultancy firm, Electricite de France (EDF), has expressed interest in handling the proposed upgrading project of the national control center (NCC) of the National Transmission Co. (Transco).

In a letter to Transco president Asisclo Gonzaga, EDF said they have visited the systems operations group and had a chance to visit Transco’s NCC.

"During our visit, we took notice of a possible project related to the upgrade of the 4 area control center (ACC) located in Luzon," the company said.

EDF said it was high time Transco consider an upgrade in some areas of the NCC. "We have understood that the current NCC has been recently renovated, and the 4 ACC would also need an upgrade, in order to support the new NCC equipment and the new competitive electricity market implementation," it said.

According to EDF, they are also willing to conduct a feasibility study on this project to assess the various alternatives for adapting the ACC hardware and software tools and the telecommunications network.

The areas to be covered by the feasibility study, EDF said, include: metering devices, power operation software and hardware, basic design and optimum timetable for software and hardware implementation, telecommunications network and cost estimate of the different alternatives.

EDF said it would be willing to identify an external funding assistance from the government of France to complete the proposed feasibility study.

As a consultancy company, EDF has been involved in upgrading various control centers abroad.

EDF is also one of the international power firms that has indicated plans to bid for the transmission assets of the National Power Corp. (Napocor). The privatization of these assets is set for the last quarter of this year.

After having been hit with several system-wide blackouts, Transco has considered upgrading its control center as a priority project to prevent such incidents.