Meet the Reps: CP Engenharia

Article authored by Sylvio Cayres, Global Representative for the RTDS Simulator, overseeing Brazil

Located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Cayres Pinto Engenharia Ltd. (CP Engenharia) was founded in 1990 and has been performing consulting services, technical support, and training for electric utilities, engineering companies, and universities.

In the beginning, CP Engenharia had different partners in the electric power systems industry, including Toshiba Protection Division in Japan, Artus (a digital fault recorder manufacturer) in France (represented by Adimarco), Schweitzer Engineering Labs – SEL in the USA (then, also represented by Adimarco), and Macrodyne in the USA (the company that first launched the concepts for the power system phasor measurement and manufactured the first standalone PMU). Today, CP Engenharia is responsible for the technical-commercial support for ASPEN and the RTDS Simulator.

Using ASPEN short-circuit and power flow software for consulting projects in the late 1990s, CP Engenharia ended up developing a strong link with that Californian company and, in 2000, CP Engenharia was granted the right to provide technical support and training to all ASPEN’s Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking customers. Today, the company is increasingly committed to its customers, leading CP Engenharia to develop many training courses and consulting services based on the ASPEN software, which the company has offered throughout Spain and Central America.

In 2002, a representative agreement was signed with RTDS Technologies Inc. By then, only one company in Brazil (FURNAS) used the RTDS Simulator, which it had acquired in the mid-1990s, making it one of the first commercial installations of the RTDS Simulator in the world.

Today, Brazil has a total of 20 RTDS Simulator installations, found in electric utility companies, universities, and manufacturers. The country also has large RTDS Simulators running at the Brazilian National System Operator (ONS), with a PB5/GPC- & NovaCor-platform configuration; and at the Itaipu Technological Park (PTI), located in the Itaipu Power Plant area, now being fully upgraded to the NovaCor platform. ONS’ and PTI’s RTDS Simulators are within the largest utility real-time simulators in the world.

CP Engenharia has been marketing the RTDS Simulator across Brazil. Staff at RTDS Technologies have often come to Brazil for presentations at conferences in the electrical sector, and for specific visits to users and prospective customers.