The need for enhanced power system visualizations has been increasingly acute over the last decade as the size of power system models has grown. For example, North America planning power flow models can have more than 44,000 buses, and state estimator models can have even more nodes. And with the development of competitive, optimal power flow (OPF) based
electricity markets, new study variables (such as locational marginal prices) have increased as
well. Finally, large-scale blackouts around the world recent have dramatically demonstrated how
a lack of operational “situational awareness” can put millions in the dark. Our research shows
that good visualization techniques improves the efficiency of operator response to power system problems.
As the electricity industry becomes increasingly competitive, knowledge concerning the
capacity and constraints of the electric system will become a commodity of great value. In an
environment where electricity markets can be fast changing, participants can obtain a
competitive advantage by understanding the implications of these changes before others. One
goal of this project was to develop innovative methods to assist players in the electricity industry
to extract and visualize this knowledge from the large set of power system data. The project
explored the visualization of data macroscopically and microscopically, i.e., visualization of the
power system as a whole as well as individual power system elements.
This report, along with the related publications, present results from the PSERC
“Visualization of Power Systems and Components” project. The research focused on (1) the
development and/or enhancement of techniques for visualizing power system information, (2)
the development of techniques for visualizing power system component information, and (3)
performing human factors experiments and analysis on the visualizations developed in the
project.
The specific results from the project can be grouped into four areas. First, the project
developed enhanced two-dimensional (2D) power system visualizations. A key accomplishment
in this area was demonstrating how selective filtering of power system one-lines can be helpful
in focusing attention on particular elements of a one-line. The project also demonstrated how
gauges could be used on one-lines for reactive power visualization, and how contouring could be
used for showing net bus power injections.
Second, the project demonstrated how three-dimensional (3D) visualizations could be used to
display contingency analysis bus voltage magnitude information and transmission
line/transformer flow information. The desirable functionalities of such visualizations include
showing the overall system security status, showing the severity levels of the contingencies in
terms of their associated limit violations, and showing the geographic connection between the
violated elements and the contingent elements. The traditional EMS display of contingency
analysis results is a tabular list of contingencies with their associated limit violations. While this
may be sufficient during routine operation, this tabular list can get quite long during system
emergencies. The project demonstrated the use of 3D displays to show the geographic
relationships between the contingencies causing violations and the violated elements. This
allows the overall contingency analysis results for a system to be conveyed “at a glace.” Such
displays could be used to supplement the traditional tabular displays.
Third, the project demonstrated how system wide overview visualizations could be
supplemented with visualizations of the detailed status and operating conditions of important
power system devices. The project considered two devices: generators and transformers. For
ii
both the project presents appropriate models for the devices, and then shows how 3D
visualizations can be used to show device values. For generators 3D visualized quantities
included magnetic fields and temperatures, while the transformer visualizations show
temperature.
Last, the project focused on the performance of formal human factor experiments to evaluate
the effectiveness of power system visualizations. In particular, the project looked at the use of
pie charts to visualize line flow, animated visualization of transmission line flows, animated
visualization of power transfer distribution factors (PTDFs), and the use of 3D to show generator
real power outputs. The key results were 1) the use of pie charts did not improve overall solution
times but did result in solutions with fewer errors, 2) for line violations the use of animated
arrows improved solution time and accuracy for contingencies causing multiple violations, 3) the
use of pie charts with animated arrows resulted in better results than either alone, 4) the use of
animated arrows for PTDF visualization results in quicker and more accurate task completion,
and 5) the visualization of 3D generators results in quicker and more accurate task completion
compared to comparable 2D visualizations. All experiments were performed using University of
Illinois Electrical and Computer Engineering students.
We believe this project has made significant advances in the area of power system
visualization. Visualization can also play a crucial role in reducing the risk of future blackouts
by helping operators to quickly assess a potentially rapidly changing system state, and by helping
them to formulate corrective control actions. This research project has developed several new
methods that could be quite useful for the representation of this data both at a system level and at
a component level, performed formal human factors experiments to test the effectiveness of
several of these techniques, and assisted in the actual implementation of research results in
various control centers.
Nevertheless, significant challenges remain. Key challenges include the problem of wide-area
visualization of all pertinent system quantities, the incorporation of new system measurements
into the visualizations such as those from phasor measurement units and substation IEDs
(intelligent electronic devices), the visualization of time-varying system information, the
integration of enhanced visualization into existing EMS applications such as alarming, and
further work on component level visualization. Hence while we believe we have made
significant progress over the course of this research project, more research is certainly needed to
develop better methods for visualizing this data, performing human factors assessments on these
new techniques, and rapidly transferring the results to industry.
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发表于 2009-1-23 08:44:39
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