Contingency Analysis » Make Better Decisions

Providing operators with the best possible solutions for their training and operational needs has always been the IncSys mission. With the development of an advanced Contingency Analysis tool, IncSys is now giving operators a chance to make even better, more informed decisions on the job.

IncSys is committed to understanding how an operator thinks and integrating those mental models into the real-time tools it develops. IncSys is using the Expert Operator Decision Model (based on the Recognition Primed Decision Model developed by Dr. Gary Klein) to systematically evaluate new applications and
visualizations.

Operator Decision-Making

The situation or state of the system will vary based upon a number of factors including, time of day, current & forecasted system load and weather conditions for local and interconnected areas, current and forecasted generation and transmission maintenance outages for local and interconnected areas, current and forecasted interchange levels and flow patterns.

The situation or state of the system is presented to the system operator as cues from a variety of sources including: measurements from the system and data links, communications with personnel within and outside of the control room, reports on results of on-line analysis programs, results from operation planning studies and operation planning engineers. The electric power grid control system contains cues on numerous displays including system summary displays, alarm logs, abnormal summaries, charts, map boards and system overview displays that reflect thousands of variables.

The saying “too much data and not enough information” is often used to describe the user interface problem.

Solution

In partnership with Pacific Northwest Laboratories and PowerData Corporation, we have developed a better way to predict even the worst case contingencies.

At the Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center (EIOC) at PNNL in Richland, WA in August 2009, IncSys and PNNL pioneered one of the first formal human factors studies of operator performance with a control group and an experimental group to evaluate the effectiveness of Graphical Contingency Analysis. Control room operators from several Northwestern utilities participated in exercises identifying and preventing the occurrence of cascading blackouts using the hypothetical 29 station PALCO system and PowerSimulator.

During June 2010 the operator performance experiment was taken to a new level. The conventional tabular contingency analysis and the advanced graphical contingency analysis were integrated into the WECC Transmission Operations with Voltage Control class, which was delivered by WECC Trainer, Robert Eubank.

The class met the goals of objectively evaluating the benefits of an advanced visualization tool while at the same time provided NERC certified training to power system operators.

The research proves that the Advanced Contingency Analysis Tool is effective in improving the decision-making ability of operators.

Call an IncSys representative to find out how you can get the CA tool customized to your own system.