NorthWestern Energy, one of the largest providers of electricity and natural gas in the upper midwest and northwest, chose LynxOS® for its Acceleration Trend Relay (ATR), a system of devices designed to automatically monitor the utility's electricity transmission system and take actions to maintain system stability. While other electricity providers rely on a widespread network of devices that require human monitoring and intervention in case of system instability, NorthWestern Energy's ATR system is always on, monitoring the effects of electrical events on four coal-fired generators in its system. If these effects exceed the limits that have been programmed into the ATR, it then trips breakers to protect the system from instability.
The hard real-time environment built into the LynxOS real-time operating system (RTOS) ensures that the ATR system will give fast, predictable responses during a set period of time should the fault parameters be exceeded, helping maintain the transmission system without interruption. NorthWestern Energy selected LynxOS because it met its stringent reliability requirements and for its support for open standards like POSIX®.
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