Vendor needs to provide PowerSIMM software consulting services for assist it in assessing the functional capabilities and limitations of the PowerSIMM software and its use by North-western in the development of its Electric Integrated Resource Plan, including whether the model provides a reasonable platform for fairly and objectively evaluating actual resource offers in future competitive solicitations and for determining plausible long-term impacts on the total costs of Northwestern's supply portfolio under different resource configurations and associated risk exposure.
- To the extent the contractor is not familiar with the PowerSIMMTM software and its logic, the contractor shall obtain a thorough understanding of the software through interactions with Ascend Analytics and North-western personnel. A thorough understanding of the software means familiarity with key algorithms and objective functions, but not the computer code or programming language behind the software.
- The contractor shall objectively analyze Northwestern's electric integrated resource plan, focusing on the elements of the plan that address capacity expansion modeling and automated resource selection, simulated system operations, and production cost modeling.
- The contractor shall obtain access to the PowerSIMMTM software through North-western and assess the sensitivity of modeling results to the specific user-defined modeling parameters and model set points used by North-western in its modeling studies. The contractor shall immediately notify PSC staff upon encountering any impediments or delays in obtaining access to the PowerSIMMTM software.
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