Synchronized Sampling Uses for Real-Time Monitoring and Control: Functional Design for Visualization Tools

Utilities are striving to reduce outage time and improve quality of power delivery. An effective way to accomplish this is to speed up fault location procedure through automation of both data retrieval and fault analysis.

This project aims at addressing a set of visualization tools for future generation of switchable networks, with a particular emphasis on visualization used in the control center. The first phase of the project has explored the specific requirements for developing the graphical software (see Appendix). This is the second report which provides functional design specification for the visualization tools.

While designing the specific interfaces integrated in the GUI software, our main objectives are the following:

• Obtained data and calculated results should be available to different user groups involved in decision making and subsequent actions simultaneously;
• The interactive view of the events should show both the physical environment that surrounds fault location, as well as detailed views of the equipment involved in fault clearing
• Create user friendly interface that helps the decision making process and does not contain unnecessary details

Our goal is to make the graphical software transparent to users, meaning that the user will not have to worry how the data is obtained as long as the information presented to the user is highly descriptive. The best way to achieve this transparency is to understand the user's required tasks and incorporate that feature into the user's interface.

In the design process, we are trying to provide users with the availability of direct manipulation of objects and actions of interest. For this purpose, component models as well as satellite images are available in the GUI.