Displaying the state of an electric system: a preliminary study

A number of electric utilities lack of a system-level overview of their electric grid. This was exemplified in the Aug. 14, 2003 blackout - one of the biggest in North Amercia. The aim of this project is to demonstrate a process to develop a electric grid overview, that is straightforward to implement and easy to understand. To that end, a geographical based layout is used. The displays include both a non-distorted view of the whole grid accompanied by a number of sub views of congested areas and a distorted lens view of the whole electric grid, incorporating the congested areas. The non-distorted view is based on a ´highway map´ paradigm with the ´highway map´ being the whole grid, with the congested areas being shown as ´street maps´. The nonlinear view is a display of the whole grid with the congested areas magnified to show more detail while maintaining the overall context of the electric grid. Two different indicators are also demonstrated: a semicular indicator for use in the whole system views and a bar indicator for use in congested area sub views. Moreover, the process is demonstrated for preparing the electric grid data for use by the display program. The process makes the most use of automatic data processing. Thus, only minor manual corrections and additions are required. Data describing SaskPower´s electric grid was used as a case study