macomber map demonstration - ems users conference
TRANSCRIPT
Macomber Map
Demonstration
Michael E. Legatt, Ph.D.
Senior Human Factors Engineer
EMS Users Conference
September 20, 2010
2 Texas Senate – Energy ThursdayJune 3, 2010
Copyright / Trademark
The materials included within the presentation are the intellectual property of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
All content contained herein, literary, pictorial, graphic or
otherwise are copyright protected © 2010, ERCOT, Inc.,
Michael E. Legatt, Ph.D.
“Macomber Map” is a pending trademark of ERCOT, Inc.
All rights reserved.
3 Texas Senate – Energy ThursdayJune 3, 2010
History
• Need for situation awareness and user experience enhancements in control rooms
• Blackout of 2003
• Main issues:
– Need for wide-area and high-level views
– “Alarm storm”
– “Dust storm”
– Locations of equipment
– Navigation between one-lines
– Naming conventions for equipment
– Data integration across multiple systems
– Increased cognitive load as operators increasingly managing more tasks with more complex systems.
• This trend is only continuing (e.g., advanced metering)
4 Texas Senate – Energy ThursdayJune 3, 2010
History
• Gary Macomber & Kate Horne performed initial research on the needs in control room in 2005.
• I started at ERCOT in 2007, working with on UI improvements in the control room, meeting at least once a week with control room operators and other key staff.
• Over the ensuing years, ongoing prototyping, display building and integrated visualization systems were developed with refinements based on continual user feedback.
• In 2008, Gary passed away a week before approval to develop one of these prototypes into a new control room UI, and it’s named in his memory – Macomber Map.
5 Texas Senate – Energy ThursdayJune 3, 2010
Macomber Map
• Macomber Map is a visualization tool – business processes run by the core systems
• Macomber Map being used in control room, by NERC, FERC, and TRE for monitoring, engineers for studying, training.
• Core functionality:
– Integrates the many data sources in the control room: network model, real-time and study energy data, market data, so that an operator can see all data for single element (e.g., a generator), across applications and systems.
– A “Google” approach to the transmission grid, allowing operators to locate elements by a series of keywords (e.g., name, county, voltage, owner)
– Linking all transmission elements to a point on the map, to prevent alarm and dust storms
6 Texas Senate – Energy ThursdayJune 3, 2010
Macomber Map
• Core functionality (continued)
– Operating in a pyramid approach, allowing operators to drill down quickly from high-level to detailed data rapidly: “forest and the trees.”
– Consistent positional awareness, regardless of detail level Linking equipment with ownership and operatorship information for rapid response.
– When possible, linking problems with potential solutions.
– Allowing operators to aggregate data within regions (e.g., Hurricane Dolly).
7 Texas Senate – Energy ThursdayJune 3, 2010
Macomber Map
• Many departments using tools derived from Macomber Map (over 20)
– Control room
– Network modeling group
– Congestion Revenue Rights (CRR) group
– MIS Group (Contour map of locational marginal pricing and settlement point pricing)
– Training group
– Engineering
• User Experience improvements
• Several projects using MM core libraries for quicker development, easier business process integration, significant cost savings to ERCOT.
8 Texas Senate – Energy ThursdayJune 3, 2010
Ongoing enhancements
• Integration with additional systems and data (e.g., TruWind)
• Using MM as a test platform for research, determining optimum color patterns, etc.
• Increased utility in viewing historical data
• Additional weather data
9 Texas Senate – Energy ThursdayJune 3, 2010
Macomber Map
10 Texas Senate – Energy ThursdayJune 3, 2010
Macomber Map