• Improving system reliability and reducing operational risks through the improved situational awareness of operators, including the incorporation of equipment health information into the control room and the identification of operating boundaries and margins

• Supporting operators in identifying potential voltage stability concerns in real-time and ensuring that steady-state and postcontingency system voltage performance is maintained, utilising the optimal mix of available reactive resources

• Reducing the risk of wide-area events and improving restoration time and reducing outage costs through identifying optimal blackstart capability requirements and developing restoration optimisation methods and guided control decision –making when separation may be the best choice

• Developing advanced analysis algorithms that utilise emerging hardware and software enabled approaches to increase computational efficiency of control room applications while increasing the resolution of the calculations to take advantage of new inputs such as synchrophasor data to support operator situational awareness and decision support.

EPRI's Grid Operations research program delivers value using the shared experiences and understanding of its utility and independent system operator (ISO) members in conjunction with the expertise of EPRI's staff and network of top-level contractors.

The program conducts research projects that lead to prototype methods and tools that can be utilised by system operators to validate the methods that are then distributed to commercial vendors that supply and support member applications. EPRI also engages with external industry standards, regulatory, and research efforts to ensure that the EPRI research program is taking advantage of broader industry efforts and advancing the state of the art.

This research program also strives to provide members both near-term, mid-term, and long-term value. For example, the 2013 Grid Operations research program will finalize the development of prototype tools for supporting identification and mitigation of potential voltage stability concerns and deliver prototype tools and guidelines for identifying the optimal blackstart capability needed to restore the system after an outage during a time when many system are re-evaluating blackstart/restoration plans given the evolving generation mix. At the same time, we will continue development/evaluations of advanced data processing, computing technologies, and solution algorithms to improve the performance of all operational analytics and decision making.