As electric grids around the world evolve, planners are navigating a surge in inverter-based resources (IBRs), expanding electrification, and increasingly variable loads. Planning software is often fragmented and perpetuates a siloed approach to planning—one tool and data model to simulate power flow, another tool and data model to analyze production cost, and so on.
Planners today need to have a concurrent view of how load, capacity, and transmission constraints work together, taking into account the dynamic needs of the grid. Resulting in the industry-wide shift toward Integrated System Planning (ISP). If you would like to learn more about ISP, read Integrated System Planning and why it matters for a detailed look.
To have a more efficient way to plan holistically, planners need a platform that not only connects formerly siloed model assumptions and parameters but also manages the massive volume of data required to run scenarios. That’s where PlanOS from GE Vernova’s Consulting Services business aims to change the game.
PlanOS is the long-term grid planning software platform developed for un-siloed ISP, allowing unified data models to flow seamlessly between its simulation tools. With PlanOS, planners are able to achieve faster model development and run multi-functional analyses for economic planning, reliability assessments, and power flow, all from a single platform. This results in a seamless and high-fidelity view of a given power system, enabling faster and better-informed planning decisions.
PlanOS brings together GE Vernova’s decades of proven planning software (Production Cost, formerly MAPS*; Resource Adequacy, formerly MARS*; Power Flow, formerly PSLF*) and newly added Capacity Expansion into one powerful interface. Planning software made by planners for planners.
Read Building trust in tomorrow’s system adequacy: How PlanOS empowers confident Integrated System Planning for a deeper dive into PlanOS and its functions.
Disconnected models and manual model assumptions are challenging. PlanOS gives you access to GE Vernova’s commercially available global data models from over 55 countries. These high-fidelity models, developed and maintained by GE Vernova, provide a pre-built, high-quality dataset that serves as a starting point for planners.
Whether you’re modeling the grid of a major U.S. utility or a developing energy system in Europe, these models help to reduce start-up time while improving your analysis accuracy.
Learn more about these models in our recent article, A library of power grids.
With a unified dataset model accessible in a single platform, PlanOS enables seamless simulation across all the long-term planning functions you need. Regardless of whether different teams are running simulations independently or collaborating across multiple types of analysis, they can easily share outputs and seamlessly integrate them into their analysis. Now, let’s take a closer look at how data flows in PlanOS and how this approach supports comprehensive, confident planning for a more reliable, resilient, and stable energy system.
PlanOS Power Flow runs simulations to verify whether your transmission network performs as expected. PlanOS Power Flow sends network topology data to transfer analysis, contingency analysis, and when needed, dynamics or short-circuit analyses. Unlike most other software, PlanOS Power Flow has built-in contingency and transfer analysis capabilities, with no third-party software required. Allowing you to create monitored and contingent element lists, including custom contingencies.
These capabilities collectively model the physical behavior of the grid and its connected equipment, identifying vulnerabilities to help ensure reliable operation.
The physical models don’t stop at reliability—PlanOS also helps with economic planning. Base data from PlanOS Power Flow and contingency definitions from contingency analysis flow into PlanOS Production Cost for nodal analysis, resulting in a techno-economic model. The transfer analysis sends operating limits for a specific model to the PlanOS Production Cost function for zonal analysis, which simulates the economic operation of the power system. Given the limitations of your transmission system, you can identify the most economical way to schedule generation to serve demand.
Transfer analysis can also feed dynamic emergency limits data to PlanOS Resource Adequacy. Based on your units and how much you depend on your neighbors, you can see how reliable your system is. Other commercial programs require you to license separate tools to calculate changes and limits. With PlanOS, you can quickly rerun your analysis and get new emergency limits to feed into PlanOS Resource Adequacy. PlanOS Resource Adequacy determines whether your system can reliably meet demand, factoring in capacity, neighboring systems, and emergency limits.
Together, PlanOS Resource Adequacy and transfer analysis send data into the new PlanOS Capacity Expansion functionality, helping you develop a plan for building new energy generations capacity. Your current generation capacity, placed alongside estimates of future costs, demand, and regulations, gives you a forecast of more reliable capacity additions and adaptable plans that can reduce costs across many possible future outcomes. You also have the option to send your capacity model back into PlanOS Resource Adequacy to verify its level of reliability. PlanOS Capacity Expansion also flows into PlanOS Production Cost to simulate the economic details of the grid.
By combining physical system constraints with economic decision-making, PlanOS helps planners simulate real-world outcomes—not just theoretical ones.
One of the most powerful features of PlanOS is the round-trip analysis. The outputs of economic planning analysis done in PlanOS Production Cost and Capacity Expansion are sent back into the transmission planning analysis functions.
PlanOS Power Flow is then enabled with an economical solution to evaluate, in addition to the physical network data, resulting in a more accurate model. With PlanOS, you get end-to-end long-term grid planning with a unified dataset and a proprietary simplified infrastructure.
With PlanOS, you can achieve:
PlanOS scales easily across your planning needs—from transmission studies to capacity investment.
The grid challenges of the next decade—hyperscale load growth, IBR variability, and climate resilience—demand better tools, faster coordination, and integrated data workflows.
PlanOS offers a solution enabled by seamless data flow between analyses through integrated planning functionalities. Accelerate your analysis by utilizing over 55 global high-fidelity data models built and maintained by GE Vernova.
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