EET&D : Why is Operational Analytics important to the Grid?

Lerma : One of the biggest reasons is to enhance situational awareness. The operators, their supervisors and other stakeholders need to work effectively together, not only to handle day-to-day operations, but to tackle issues and emergencies as they arise within the utility or on the power grid.

Given that need, an intelligent platform consisting of the workstations, network infrastructure, video wall and simplified controls is paramount for their success. The video wall is a crucial tool, because it allows everyone to monitor and share key information.

EET&D : What information sources are typically shared on a video wall?

Werner : As technology designers and integrators, we need a list of everything that’s available to the operators, even content that you may not expect to display on the video wall.

In an electric utility, that will typically include output from your SCADA applications, outage management systems, energy management software, geographical information systems (GIS), and dispatch, plus information required for NERC and FERC regulatory compliance. We will want to monitor weather channels and lightning computers as well, since weather can have a direct effect on operations.

Once the inputs are determined and prioritized, we can help you create sensible video wall layouts with the following in mind: What goes where during normal operations? What sources should be displayed during an emergency? Who decides when it’s time to override the standard layouts, or are they overridden automatically?

We do have a finite canvas to work with, but since the display wall is dynamic, we can easily switch to different layouts and drill down into the different data fields as needed.

EET&D : What are the network and control requirements?

Fechner : Beyond understanding the content available, we will need to know the number of sources you will want to display on the operators’ workstations and the video wall at any given time, as well as the native resolutions of each. We also need to know if you will securely stream information to overflow rooms or to other control centers. With all that in hand, we can start to design a switching and distribution infrastructure based on your requirements, one that will accommodates a wide range of sources, connection types and resolutions.

One of the most critical factors is an appropriate, intuitive user interface. We will want to add presets on a touch screen for any given scenario, so the proper information can be routed to the wall for each type of event. Should there be an outage or other emergency, the most appropriate layout can be chosen quickly, or it can automatically appear on the video wall, so that operators can ascertain the situation without delay and take appropriate measures.

EET&D : What are the requirements for the video wall?

Werner : Compared to content, network and control issues, the choice of the video wall technology and its layout becomes relatively easy.

There are three main technologies in use today. A video wall may be made up of flat-panel displays using LCD technology and LED backlights. Rear projection cubes use DLP technology with an LED light source. Making its entry into the market is narrow pixel-pitch, direct view LED, where individual pixels are formed by individual LEDs. You’ve seen this technology if you’ve ever been to a stadium with a video scoreboard, although narrow pixel-pitch displays use a much smaller, tightly-arranged LED matrix to produce the image.

Ranking these, LCD flat panels are the lowest in cost, with the shortest expected life at about 50,000 hours. Maintainability is an issue, since models change frequently, making it difficult or impossible to find a match for a defective unit after only two or three years. Direct-view LED is by far the highest in cost with an expected life, depending on the product, of roughly 50,000 – 100,000 hours. For now, there are even larger concerns about parts availability down the road.

DLP cubes fall somewhere in the middle in terms of cost, with a lifespan, in Mitsubishi’s case, of up to 100,000 hours, which is over 11 years of continuous service. This is a proven technology intended primarily for the control room, and issues with maintenance and spare parts are rare. For those reasons, cubes remain the first choice for nearly all utility control rooms, especially those used 24/7.

The displays that make up the video wall are available in a variety of sizes and resolutions, but the optimal must be determined mathematically. Keep in mind that higher-resolution displays are not always better, given that the video wall will be some distance from the operators, and that it’s made up of many smaller displays that combine to form the finished wall. It’s best to let your design team recommend the best technology, size and resolution for your situation.

Lerma : That said, we do generally recommend that our clients make the video wall canvas as large as possible given the room size, viewing distance and budget. Once you start using your video wall, you will almost certainly wish you could include more content: more detail on an outage, more information from your GIS, more applications from your SCADA system.

EET&D : What factors affect the reliability and longevity of your new technology?

Lerma : When we start talking about expected lifetimes, we often put the electronics and the infrastructure into separate categories.

Many users expect to refresh their computers and related equipment every five years or less. Upgrading servers and storage can result in significant gains in processing power.

Most want the infrastructure, however, including the cable plant and the switcher to last 20 years or more. We tend to look at the video wall as part of the infrastructure, since its performance is limited not by processing power, but by the acuity of the human eye. A display that will last 10 years or more with little or no maintenance is thus very attractive.

Werner : In order to achieve that long-term quality and reliability, we recommend that you keep some number of spare displays on hand. With direct-view LED, you will want to keep at least 15% of your video wall surface on hand in spare parts, in order to ensure that parts will be available as needed. With flat-panel displays, you will definitely want some extras, to ensure that you have exact replacements down the road. Even with cubes, we suggest you have one or more extra engines on hand. If you do have a problem, you can replace a DLP engine in the cube in about four minutes, and then send the defective unit out for repair.

Fechner : Within the network and switching infrastructure, long-term reliability becomes less of a concern. The most critical applications will run redundant primary/secondary networks, but in many cases that’s not needed.

Crestron, for example, uses a chassis-based switcher in our DigitalMedia solution. It’s populated with dual power supplies and individual cards or blades. Should one fail, the rest of the system will continue to work uninterrupted. Having a card-based chassis also creates flexibility that greatly extends the life of the system. While today you may need video cards for VGA, HDMI, and DisplayPort, you can be confident that, when new standards are introduced, Crestron will offer the appropriate cards.

The best control systems, including those from Crestron, will last a decade or more. If you decide you need new functionality within your control room, add workstations or video sources, normally you can upgrade the controls through programming.

Lerma : It’s important to understand that, when a professional integrator like AVI-SPL designs your control-room technology, we focus on purpose-built equipment that is meant to run in 24/7 environments. These components are extremely reliable. We have control rooms that we built 15 years ago, still using the Mitsubishi and Crestron products we originally installed.

While you do need to be careful when you choose your suppliers, that is the level of quality and support you can expect from using our products and services.
 

About the Moderator

Don Kreski is president of Kreski Marketing Consultants Inc. The company provides writing and creative services to key sectors of the industry.