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Invenia had run Julia for our primary production system for over a year (nearly 2). The size of our Julia codebase is about 400,000 lines of code, spread over

Invenia had run Julia for our primary production system for over a year (nearly 2). The size of our Julia codebase is about 400,000 lines of code, spread over numerous internal and open source packages. You can cite the "we're hiring" slide from my Juliacon talk for that https://raw.githack.com/oxinabox/ChainRulesJuliaCon2020/main/out/build/index.html#2 https://raw.githack.com/oxinabox/ChainRulesJuliaCon2020/main...

7thaccount 6y ago
As someone working in power systems (electrical engineer) and who programs in Julia for fun a bit. I'm curious about y'all's business model. I've asked before and only gotten something about load forecasting which I can't see supporting 30 people. Can you shed any light on the business model? Contract work? Do y'all have an actual software product? Please note that I'm not being critical, I am legitimately curious as the work y'all do seems to be very academic which I tend to see more coming out of universities. 400k loc is a lot btw, so it seems like y'all are pretty busy!
- oxinabox 6y ago
  The short answer is that you are underestimating the scale. Invenia operates over most of grids in the continental US. Think less "helping one powerplant how much to generate, and thus saving them money on wasted fuel if not needed." And more "helping thousands...", we're more linked to the system operators than the individual plants. And the systems move huge amount of power each day, so small percentage efficiencies is still a big number dollar wise
  - 7thaccount 6y ago
    No, I know what a system operator is which is why I'm asking the question. It was a fair assumption though to assume I was talking about the utility level of granularity though. As far as I know, all ISO's in the USA use either ABB, Siemens, or GE for their market optimization software (huge systems) or basically those same vendors plus a few more for their EMS systems. There are also plenty of other amazing products for transmission planning, short term studies, and transient stability studies. More specifically, how are you linked to the system operators? When you say you optimize the grid, that could mean any one of a thousand different things. Are you providing various inputs (forecasts, risk factors, etc) that are used by some markets? Please note that I'm not questioning that y'all work with some of these entities in some fashion, I'm just trying to get a better handle on the specifics of where y'all are plugged in.
agumonkey 6y ago
Was it a new project using Julia from scratch ?
- 3JPLW 6y ago
  Not an Invenian, but my understanding is that they gradually transitioned away from a mix of MATLAB, Python, and C. https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/invenia.html https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/invenia.html
nickjj 6y ago
I'd be super interested in having you (or someone at Invenia) on as a guest on a podcast that talks about tech stacks. We'd cover things like what development and deployment is like, which tools you use and why you chose them, etc.. At the moment there's no Julia episodes yet. If you want to come on, head over to https://runninginproduction.com/ https://runninginproduction.com/ and click the "become a guest" button near the top right to get the ball rolling.
- LolWolf 6y ago
  Oh, that would be awesome! I would really love to listen to a bit more detail about the choice of Julia for a company's stack. (I am an academic, so choosing Julia was very easy for me :) but I can imagine this choice could likely be harder outside of basic research.)
literallycancer 6y ago
You guys should look into the font size and text colors (contrast) on your website. It's really hard to read.

7thaccount 6y ago

As someone working in power systems (electrical engineer) and who programs in Julia for fun a bit. I'm curious about y'all's business model. I've asked before and only gotten something about load forecasting which I can't see supporting 30 people. Can you shed any light on the business model? Contract work? Do y'all have an actual software product? Please note that I'm not being critical, I am legitimately curious as the work y'all do seems to be very academic which I tend to see more coming out of universities. 400k loc is a lot btw, so it seems like y'all are pretty busy!

oxinabox 6y ago
The short answer is that you are underestimating the scale. Invenia operates over most of grids in the continental US. Think less "helping one powerplant how much to generate, and thus saving them money on wasted fuel if not needed." And more "helping thousands...", we're more linked to the system operators than the individual plants. And the systems move huge amount of power each day, so small percentage efficiencies is still a big number dollar wise
- 7thaccount 6y ago
  No, I know what a system operator is which is why I'm asking the question. It was a fair assumption though to assume I was talking about the utility level of granularity though. As far as I know, all ISO's in the USA use either ABB, Siemens, or GE for their market optimization software (huge systems) or basically those same vendors plus a few more for their EMS systems. There are also plenty of other amazing products for transmission planning, short term studies, and transient stability studies. More specifically, how are you linked to the system operators? When you say you optimize the grid, that could mean any one of a thousand different things. Are you providing various inputs (forecasts, risk factors, etc) that are used by some markets? Please note that I'm not questioning that y'all work with some of these entities in some fashion, I'm just trying to get a better handle on the specifics of where y'all are plugged in.

agumonkey 6y ago

Was it a new project using Julia from scratch ?

3JPLW 6y ago
Not an Invenian, but my understanding is that they gradually transitioned away from a mix of MATLAB, Python, and C. https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/invenia.html https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/invenia.html

nickjj 6y ago

I'd be super interested in having you (or someone at Invenia) on as a guest on a podcast that talks about tech stacks. We'd cover things like what development and deployment is like, which tools you use and why you chose them, etc.. At the moment there's no Julia episodes yet. If you want to come on, head over to https://runninginproduction.com/ https://runninginproduction.com/ and click the "become a guest" button near the top right to get the ball rolling.

LolWolf 6y ago
Oh, that would be awesome! I would really love to listen to a bit more detail about the choice of Julia for a company's stack. (I am an academic, so choosing Julia was very easy for me :) but I can imagine this choice could likely be harder outside of basic research.)

literallycancer 6y ago

You guys should look into the font size and text colors (contrast) on your website. It's really hard to read.