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New Video Projection Control Room is OK with Public Service of Oklahoma Joe Buttress Project Manager, EMS/SCADA, Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) Tulsa, Oklahoma The Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) has 473,000 electricity customers across the state. While power failures are unquestionably an inconvenience to residential customers and a loss of income to the utility, power outages can have serious financial effects on the region's business community. Oil and natural gas producers, pipelines, aircraft and aerospace companies, farms, ranches and wood products producers rely on PSO to supply them with electricity. Historically, every supplier of electricity experiences and, regardless of circumstances, is responsible for correcting power supply failures. Therefore, to successfully serve our customers, we strive to identify three key pieces of information for each report of trouble we receive: Is their power off? If so, why? Approximately when will it be restored? To know the answer to these three questions before customers begin calling requires cutting-edge technology, highly trained technicians, dispatch operations staff and customer service personnel. At Public Service Company of Oklahoma, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Central and South West Corporation, we have an obligation to maximize efficiency and live up to our middle name: "Service." Quickly determining the location, cause and effect of any electrical disruptions and estimating repair times is a matter that PSO addressed as early as 1975. At that time, we installed the latest available technology in our Energy Control Center: a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system and mosaic wallboard system. The wallboard system was a static representation of the electric system as it was then configured. The wallboard consisted of thousands of two-inch plastic cubes that had to be constantly re-configured to accurately portray changes in the electric system. This was a time-consuming process. Soon, the manufacturer of the wallboard system went out of business and, consequently, parts became difficult to attain. We knew that we needed a large screen display system that would give us a better look at our power transmission and distribution system while providing greater accuracy and flexibility with less maintenance than the static wallboard system. But the real attraction of a video system was its capability to integrate the LAN-based computer systems into one interactive user interface, with a single keyboard and mouse for our dispatchers. In January 1995 PSO chose Maya Video Communications of New York, N.Y. to provide the system. Although the SCADA system (purchased from ESCA, Inc.) and an Outage Analysis system (purchased from ABB, Inc.) are built on different operating system platforms, the video system integrates the two on multiple video arrays. This enables our dispatchers to interactively control multiple systems from a single user interface (the video screens)and one keyboard and mouse. We became familiar with major vendors of video projection systems by attending trade shows. Maya impressed us and I went to New York for a first-hand look at their installation for Con Edison. Most of the video projection equipment we saw was very much the same, but Maya's stood out because their software runs on off-the-shelf Unix Workstations. This was a major advantage over the proprietary solutions offered by the other vendors. To accommodate the new video system we significantly remodeled our dispatch arena. The architectural firm of Robert E. Lamb (Valley Forge, Pa.) worked with Maya Video to provide the design. Other new equipment, including dispatch consoles from Evans Console, was also installed during the remodeling. The architectural changes helped to maximize ergonomics and visual clarity and provided an ideal work environment for our 25 dispatchers. A typical problem faced by a dispatcher is an operation or failure of a distribution feeder breaker at a substation. When this happens the SCADA system instantly issues an audible alarm to the dispatcher. The dispatcher can view the alarm list or substation one line diagram on the video screen or CRT console. If the problem is not resolved within a minute or two, customers tied to that feeder will usually begin calling PSO. Each call is identified by the Outage Analysis system and a location of the fault is predicted. The calls are geographically displayed on the screen by the system as a telephone icon. If the fault is temporary, the dispatcher can close the breaker via SCADA, possibly fixing the problem before a customer calls. If required, a switchman or trouble crew will be dispatched. The video projection technology is a great improvement over the wallboard system. The Maya system provides dispatchers with real time data from diverse computer systems, allowing PSO to provide a higher lever of service to our customers. |