Case Study: Southwest Power Pool achieves reliable, real-time automation (jobs every 4 seconds) with JAMS

JAMS Automation as Frequent as Every 4 Seconds

Southwest Power Pool (SPP) is a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission–mandated Independent System Operator that ensures reliable power and competitive wholesale prices across nine states. SPP must process real-time transmission data from more than 100,000 points every 4–30 seconds and run 100–150 jobs hourly (some as often as every 4 seconds). A patchwork of Task Scheduler, Cron and an unreliable proprietary tool created support headaches, lacked enterprise security and clustering support, and could not reliably meet SPP’s intensive, always-on requirements.

SPP implemented JAMS Job Scheduler, migrating heterogeneous batch processes and running scripts, SQL/SSIS packages, PowerShell and C# within unified workflows. JAMS integrated with alerts and the support system, is used by about 60 staff across teams, eliminated a nightly 20–30 minute manual check, and surfaces errors quickly (e.g., expiring certificates) so issues are resolved before failures occur. The result is centralized automation that delivers the reliability and resiliency SPP needs for real-time power transmission operations.

Southwest Power Pool

Brad Cowell

Senior Programmer/Analyst