Considering that VLPGO is a forum for dealing with matters of interest to the Brazilian electric system operation, in 2011 ONS kept its participation in this group. This year, the presidency was held by the General Director of Red Eléctrica de España, being approved at the annual meeting of VLPGO in November, that the presidency will be held in 2012 by the President of Reseau de Transport Electricité, from France.

ONS participated directly in the works carried out about the issues that were prioritized, taking over the coordination of some of these issues:

• Integration of renewable resources;

•  DC systems in extra-high voltage (800 kV);

• Security versus cost in reliability evaluation;
•  Best practices for the recovery of large systems;
• Overcoming of short circuit levels in equipment and facilities;
• Specification and evaluation of the implementation Phasor Measurement Units (PMU) and
•  Communication.   

Given the expected developments in the composition of supply and demand for electricity in the world, ONS also monitors issues that will certainly have important repercussions for the operation of BIPS in the future as:  

• Development and penetration of electric vehicles;
• Energy storage systems;

• Evolution of the concept and implementation of Smart Grid, and
• New models for load forecasting.

It is worth mentioning that in 2011, VLPGO remained one of the most important forums in which ONS is keeping up to date on technological developments of interest to the world's largest operators.