Human Supervisory Control of Electric Power Transmission

Michael May
LearningLab DTU, Technical University of Denmark Anker Engelundsvej 1, DK-2800, Denmark E-mail: mma@llab.dtu.dk

Abstract As part of a planned project the paper gives an overview of human factors and visualization issues for human supervisory control in transmission and distribution control rooms. The level of automation as well as the complexity of human supervisory control is increasing in the domain of power systems and it requires a reevaluation of the Human Factors issues involved. A methodology for extending and integrating different concepts and methods of Cognitive Systems Engineering is briefly outlined. Keywords: Information Visualization, Human Supervisory Control, Cognitive Systems Engineering, Design Space Analysis, Power Systems.

Introduction

Around the world electric power networks are currently being restructured to adapt to regional electricity markets and secure the availability, resilience and sustainability of electric power generation, transmission and distribution. This poses new problems for the information visualization and human supervisory control of the highly automated processes involved. In a planned project at the Technical University of Denmark, we will survey state-ofthe-art within human factors, human-centered automation and visualization for power systems and apply a combination of systematic methods (cf. section 5) developed within the framework of Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) to the problems of design for human supervisory control in transmission and distribution control rooms. The project will furthermore demonstrate the utility of the proposed approach through the development of software prototypes and simulation-based experiments with operator interfaces. The purpose of the present paper in only to present an overview of some specific complexity issues of human supervisory control in the domain of power systems and to outline a methodology for extending and integrating different CSE methods, specifically concepts and methods of Ecological Interface Design, Design Space analysis, and Distributed Cognition. A theoretical description of these approaches and their integration is of cause not possible within a single paper.

Complexity and the role of automation

Human supervisory control of transmission and distributions grids will become more complex for a number of reasons, e.g. (a) the demand for sustainable power generation leading to an increased amount of variable sources of power generation with low predictability (e.g. wind energy) (Akhmatov & Knudsen 2007), (b) the increased integration and increasing size of national and regional networks (c) the increased level of automation involving distributed measurements and automated decisions, (d) the increased complexity of coordination arising with the implementation of optimal power flow (OPF) based on electricity markets, (e) the increased demand for resilient power grids (in the form of permanent micro-grids or ad-hoc controlled islanding) that can help protect the larger networks from voltage instabilities and blackouts (as well as counteract effects of terrorist attacks). Further complications include the maintenance state of the transmission and distribution networks and the lack of qualified control room operators and of updated training and procedures. One of the strategies behind the restructuring of the power grids is to use intelligent agents to increase autonomy and negotiate power distribution based on e.g. local PMU (Phasor Measurement Unit) measurements improving the current state estimation capabilities (Zhang 2007). This will however make the remaining activities of human supervisory control more difficult and demand a reconsideration of the design principles for information visualization and decision support in transmission and distribution control rooms. The increase in real system complexity (though not necessarily the operational complexity, since this is reduced by automation) and the potential increase in cognitive and display complexity, i.e. the apparent complexity for the operators (Endsley, Bolt & Jones 2003), may lead to a reduced situation awareness. This will not just be due to the danger of cutting the operators out of the loop, but also a consequence of other factors such as the coordination problem between the physicaltechnical level and the socio-economic level of regulation and control. Electrical grids obey laws of physics and do not necessarily comply with rules imposed by the energy market, as it have been demonstrated by adverse effects such as highly fluctuating prices when high demands for energy cannot be met because of overloading of nodes in the network (cf. the June 1998 Midwest example of Overbye & Weber 2000). In fact it is a general observation of the European Union for the Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE) that although the interconnected systems of power transmission networks has been developed over the years with the main goal of providing secure power supply through common use of reserve capacities and the optimization of the use of energy resources, todays market dynamics imposing a high level of cross-border exchanges is out of the scope of the original system design (UCTE Report 2004). We know from other safety-critical domains that an increased level of automation demands a re-evaluation of the role of human supervisory control (Parasuraman & Mouloua 1996; Sheridan 2002), because the reduced transparency for the human operators of the highly automated systems and advanced control strategies may lead to a reduction of team situation awareness and thus create new risks during unintended events and near-critical system states. It has also been documented that expert operators actively contribute to new risks, since attempts to optimize systems during normal operations often involve a migration from standard operational procedures to borderline tolerated conditions of use (BTCU) (Polet, Vanderhagen & Amalberti 2003).

Similar problems have been observed when control room teams have to adapt to minor unforeseen events (micro incidents) and create ad hoc solutions that are not covered by procedures (de Carvalho 2006). According to recent outage reports this is exactly one of the problems currently facing the Transmission Systems Operators (TSOs), i.e. that the systems are operated closer and closer to their limits, as established by the security criteria based on the underlying physics of electricity transmission, in order to meat demands for electricity market exchanges and utilization of wind energy etc.

Loss of Coordination and Situation Awareness

To exemplify the complexity of the context under which loss of coordination and situation awareness can result in power systems disturbances, the UCTE outage of 4. November 2006 will be mentioned. There were no extraordinary climatic conditions or technical failures leading up to the event, but due to an overproduction of wind energy in Germany, there was an increased cross-border flow from Germany to Poland and The Netherlands. The flow to Poland ran against a planned exchange based on trading activities for power flow in the opposite direction, but this is not unusual within the highly interconnected patchwork of regional TSOs that make up the European network governed by UCTE. The main event of the outage was initiated by the tripping (i.e. automatic disconnection) of several high-voltage lines in Northern Germany resulting in a splitting of the UCTE grid into three separate areas (West, North-East and SouthEast). The power imbalance induced a frequency drop that caused an interruption of power supply for more than 15 million European households (UCTE Report 2006). The events were initiated by a planned disconnection of a double circuit 380 kV line (Conneforde-Diele) that had been requested by the Meyer Werft shipyard to allow the passage of a new cruise ship under the power line over the river Ems scheduled at 01:00 of the 5. November. The responsible TSO (E.ON Netz) carried out safety calculations based on the N-1 criterion to make sure that the disconnection could be carried out without endangering the security of the overall interconnected operation. The N-1 criterion is an operational safety procedure of the UCTE implemented to make sure that any single event leading to a local loss of power systems elements should not endanger the overall operation of the system, i.e. the remaining elements still in operation should be able to accommodate the additional load or change of generation, voltage deviation or transient stability caused by the initial failure. The N-1 procedure should, together with the topology of the network and its other protective systems (e.g. high-voltage circuit-breakers, generation tripping), realize the desired resilience (flexibility and robustness, cf. Hollnagel et.al. 2006) of the overall network. The planned disconnection was scheduled several days in advance and E.ON Netz had informed the neighborhood TSOs in order for them to carry out the N-1 analysis on their own networks. On the 3. November however the shipyard requested E.ON Netz to advance the disconnection of the line by three hours. A provisional agreement was given, but without taking into account the timing of events for the neighboring TSOs. This made it impossible to reduce the scheduled exchange programs (i.e. the electricity trading) in the way it had been planned. Additionally the situation awareness of the TSO teams turned out to be slightly different, probably due to a lack of joint training across regional TSOs. According to E.ON Netz, their control room operators (dispatchers) were not aware of the difference in limit values for acceptable current values and for

warnings on the neighboring lines, and dispatchers did accordingly not base their evaluation of the developing emergency on correct understanding of the protective systems! Shortly after the requested disconnection there were warning messages about high power flow on neighboring lines. Even though the TSOs were in telephone contact, some of the protective countermeasures set in place (e.g. coupling of busbars in a substation) were carried out without further coordination due to the time constraints for avoiding cascading events. The effect of the countermeasure turned out to be contrary to what dispatchers expected: the current was increased instead of decreased and a neighboring line was automatically tripped by relays due to overloading. This led to cascading line tripping and voltage instability throughout the grid of the UCTE and to the subsequent splitting of Europe into two areas of under-frequency and one area of over-frequency. During the attempts to regain voltage stability, it was discovered that emergency procedures were not fully harmonized among the different TSOs. Even further problems arose because automated attempts to re-connect wind power input to the network led to additional overloading. From the point of view of human supervisory control it is clear that there are flaws in the coordination mechanisms set up among TSOs, including the lack of joint training of dispatchers from different regional TSOs, but also flaws in the available decision support and information visualization to support situation awareness, planning and simulation. Improved decision support could include an overview of the protective measures of neighboring TSOs (including e.g. their safety settings) and of the operational possibilities available during emergencies.

State-of-the-art in Power Systems Visualization

State-of-the-art in human factors based power systems visualization have been comprehensively documented in reports from the Power Systems Engineering Research Center (Overbye et al 2002; Overbye et al 2005 ). A brief overview of human factors issues in power systems visualization is given below. A number of issues arise from the traditional display of electric grids in twodimensional networks and different enhanced versions. The basic building blocks of 2D networks are the transmission lines represented as links and the substations represented as nodes. These substation-based one-line diagrams have their historical origin in the hard-wired wall displays of early power systems control centers, and they are still part of the foundation for power systems engineering education (fig. 1). These diagrams have later been supplemented with tabular representations of measurement data, superimposed on maps of the geographic area, and overlaid with selected alarms and status information. Information integration is here limited to the association and alignment of map locations to the spatial layout of the transmission network. Enhanced 2D network representations have been developed based on principles such as selective filtering of lines, zooming in on and high lightening of parts of a network in order to assist focusing of attention on relevant parts of the grid, use of relational information displays based on proportion (e.g. pie charts) to visualize loading, and flow animation (Wiegmann et.al. 2005) to visualize direction of abnormal flows in the grid (fig. 2. left). Furthermore the use of contour plots to represent spatially distributed continuous data such as voltage levels have been suggested (fig 2 right), and although there are inherent representational problems with this approach, from a human factors point of view

contour plots will support rapid localization of voltage violations (Overbye et.al. 2002; 2005).

Fig. 1. Left: Early use of wall displays for substation-based one-line diagrams in power system distribution control (Philadelphia 30th Street Load Dispatch Centre, 1934). Right: Modern use of substation-based one-line diagrams in power systems engineering education (Power World Simulator version 13, 2007)

Figure 2. Enhanced 2D network representations from a simulation of the 14. August 2003 outage in Ohio. Left: 2D network demonstrating zoom, flow direction arrows, pie charts representing loading and high lightening of an overloaded line with size and color coding (red). Right: 2D network display of transmission line information with overlay of a contour plot of voltage levels. Source: Overbye et.al. 2005. The representational problems are e.g. that bus data values are not really spatially contiguous but measured at distinct points in the network, that transformers can introduce discrete changes in voltage levels that can be hidden by the virtual interpolated data between measurements, and finally that voltage levels that are close to each other on one-line diagrams may not be near one another electrically. The latter problem raises the issue of the relevance of deriving more abstract information about functional relations in power systems - rather than measurements and derived data pertaining only to their physical and topological structure, cf. the general issue of functional modeling in (Lind 1994; 1999; 2003), as well as the issue of designing adequate representational forms to present this type of information (Petersen 2004), cf. also Ecological Interface Design (EID) (Burns and Hajdukiewitcz, 2004) and Design Space Analysis (May 2006; 2007; May and Petersen, 2006; Petersen and May, 2006).

Beyond the standard and enhanced 2D network representations, there is a need to design for improved forms of decision support as discussed in the case described above. One issue is the design of alternatives or supplementary forms of representations to tabular and matrix representations for contingency and risk analysis data. (Overbye et.al. 2002; 2005) have suggested the use of 3D graphs in the form of bar graphs (representing e.g. vulnerability data and severity of limit violations) superimposed on the surface of the 2D network and even the use of multiple layers of such network surfaces (to represent network overview and user selected focus area at different levels of detail). These design solutions, on the other hand, raises human factors issues of readability (i.e. perceptual ambiguity of depth, size and distance in 3D visualizations), although experimental results of (Overbye et.al. 2005; Wiegmann et.al 2006) suggest that the added dimension of 3D network overlays, allowing for graphical relational representation of non-spatial information previously confined to symbolic forms of representation (e.g. matrix forms, numeric displays), provides an advantage over 2D displays. It is possible, however, that the observed improvement is not due to the use of 3D as such, but rather an effect of the considerable information integration supported by these wide-area visualization displays, and consequently that similar or even better results might be obtained without the use of 3D, i.e. through information integration obtained by other means such as visualization of functional information, cf. the design principles of distributed cognition and Relational Information Displays (Zhang, 1996; Petersen and May, 2006) and of EID (Burns and Hajdukiewitcz, 2004; Memisevic et.al. 2005). More research is needed on these issues.

Integration of Cognitive Systems Engineering Approaches

This issue of advanced information integration is an important example of a problem that needs to be studied further. Information integration is a key problem addressed in Ecological Interface Design (EID) (Vicente and Rasmussen 1992), and the principles of EID have not yet been exploited in HMI design for power systems. EID is however not without its own problems in extending CSE, and there are known problems in CSE as well, e.g. the inconsistent conceptualization of the abstraction hierarchy as pointed out by (Lind 2003). Although EID has important contributions to CSE, it retains the inconsistencies of the original framework. Furthermore it restrict the scope of interface design by focusing on variables and constraints (neglecting objects and object relations) (Petersen 2004), and it predefines information visualization as a question of making variables and constraints directly accessible through configural displays (the idea of a direct perception of affordances). EID suffers from a kind of implicit semiotics of representation design that should be made explicit in considering the full scope of the design space through a systematic separation of its dimensions (May 2007). Direct perception is a misleading conception when it comes to representation design (because it overlooks the necessity of interpretation of data), and it can be dangerous to suggest configural displays as decision support, if operators need to understand a complex situation analytically before taking action (because information is lost in the geometric principles of information integration). We need to understand in greater detail how different dimensions of presentations (media, scales, representational forms etc.) are combined to provide cognitive support for different operator tasks and for presentation of different types of information in the work domain (not only

constraints). Leading principles in an alternative extension and revision of CSE will be the exploration of the space of representation design (a term introduced by David Woods). A preliminary study of the formal aspects of design space analysis is given in (May and Petersen 2007). Another methodology to be used is the application of cognitive ergonomics to the different types of distribution of information in complex safety-critical work domains. It can here be useful to distinguish the distribution between (1) what is supported by external tools and presentations and what needs to be constructed mentally (cognitive distribution) (Hutchins 1995; Zhang 1996), (2) what is allocated to and decided by automated agents and what needs to be decided and supervised by humans (technical distribution) (Sheridan 2002), and (3) what is coordinated and communicated within a team and what needs to be allocated to individual operators (social distribution). Human supervisory control of power systems provide an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the utility of a revised framework of CSE, including a revision of the principles of EID and the semiotic revision of design space analysis. With regard to the safety issues of designing for power systems, it will also be important to include broader concepts of design for safety such as e.g. Joint Cognitive Systems (Woods and Hollnagel, 2006) and Resilience Engineering (Hollnagel et.al., 2006), but this is outside the scope of this paper.

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