Advanced Visualizations for Smart Grid Data Analytics

Next-generation power grid technologies such as smart meters and load controls help meet current energy demands and prepare for the future. These grid technologies offer unprecedented visibility into the power grid but also add an overwhelming amount of data that must be integrated and interpreted by system operators for managing grid load, preventing surges and outages, and managing safety risks to the grid in real time. Current monitoring displays are visually and functionally non-integrated and inflexible to the information needs of the grid management team, often resulting in slow, reactive decision-making and an inability to manage risks in real-time. The project team proposes to research, develop, and demonstrate a decision support system that promotes proactive decision making and enables real-time risk management in grid operations. This decision support system will enable real-time risk management by automatically integrating data from disparate sources, allowing operators to quickly understand and evaluate the impact of those data on grid management decisions, and externalizing the decision-making process to improve decision transparency and quality. In Phase I, a tailored user-centered design process to develop a new decision support display concept that supports real-time risk management will be employed. This process will be used to identify the risk management needs of representative system operators and grid managers from a local utility company strongly endorsing this effort, determine the cognitive challenges related to integrating and processing information needed for making risk management decisions, design and communicate its decision support design concepts, assess the technical feasibility of its new decision support design concepts, and secure endorsement of this work for modernized grid operations. In Phase II, the project team will develop a data-driven, working prototype of the decision support display concept for transition to a local utility company, and potentially power system vendors, for implementation, testing, and refinement. This project will lead to more informed and well-managed risk mitigation, in turn leading to wider benefits of more reliable energy service with fewer interruptions, reduced consumer and business costs associated with power outages and system failures, and increased public safety from well-managed power grids.