title: A novel visualization technique for electric power grid analytics.
abstract: The application of information visualization holds tremendous promise for the electric power industry, but its potential has so far not been sufficiently exploited by the visualization community. Prior work on visualizing electric power systems has been limited to depicting raw or processed information on top of a geographic layout. Little effort has been devoted to visualizing the physics of the power grids, which ultimately determines the condition and stability of the electricity infrastructure. Based on this assessment, we developed a novel visualization system prototype, GreenGrid, to explore the planning and monitoring of the North American Electricity Infrastructure. The paper discusses the rationale underlying the GreenGrid design, describes its implementation and performance details, and assesses its strengths and weaknesses against the current geographic-based power grid visualization. We also present a case study using GreenGrid to analyze the information collected moments before the last major electric blackout in the Western United States and Canada, and a usability study to evaluate the practical significance of our design in simulated real-life situations. Our result indicates that many of the disturbance characteristics can be readily identified with the proper form of visualization.
authors.affiliation: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA. pak.wong@pnl.gov
authors.forename: Pak Chung
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mackey
authors.forename: Harlan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Foote
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chin
authors.forename: Ross
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Guttromson
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Thomas
mesh_terms: D003196:Computer Graphics; D003198:Computer Simulation; D017753:Ecosystem; D004560:Electricity; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011210:Power Plants; D014584:User-Computer Interface