The Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center (EIOC) serves as a real-world laboratory where power system engineers and researchers from diverse disciplines collaborate to advance grid reliability and build new grid management tools. With deep subject matter expertise in areas such as synchrophasors analytics, grid modeling, AI and machine learning, and visual analytics, the EIOC leverages innovative research methods to address emerging challenges in power system management.
Our cognitive systems and human factors researchers also observe and study grid operators to enhance situational awareness and decision-making in a control room environment. By combining research in cyber-physical security and emergency operations with hands-on training, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) allows utilities and system operators to prepare for and respond to the evolving demands of modern grid operations. Learn more about our expertise and capabilities below.
AI and Machine Learning for the Grid
The EIOC serves as a testbed for integrating AI into grid operations. Here, researchers can evaluate the trustworthiness of AI, appropriate levels of autonomy, and AI’s ability to enhance decision support for dispatchers. By emulating real-world control room environments, the EIOC addresses challenges like scalability, reliability, and human-machine collaboration. This work ensures AI technologies are seamlessly and safely implemented into grid operations, driving smarter, more resilient energy systems while meeting the needs of modern utility operators.
Synchrophasors and Big Data
The proliferation of synchrophasors across the nation’s bulk power system creates enormous data streams detailing the conditions of the grid. Robust tools are needed to transform these data into actionable intelligence for grid owners and operators, enabling the detection of faulty equipment, detection of oscillations and their location, and prevention of potential problems to maintain grid reliability. The EIOC integrates high-speed GPS time-synchronized phasor measurement unit data (synchrophasors) collected from multiple utilities across vast geographical regions, such as the bulk electric system interconnections in the United States. By combining utility data with advanced simulation tools from the EIOC, researchers can develop algorithms for situational awareness, predictive analytics, post-event analysis, and wide-area monitoring and test their performance under realistic conditions. Using EIOC data, researchers were able to develop tools like the Eastern Interconnection Situational Awareness Monitoring System and the Generator Scorecard, allowing researchers to evaluate generator responsiveness and detect anomalies in grid operations. These tools showcase the impactful advancements made possible by the EIOC.
Visual Analytics
To keep the grid running smoothly, grid operators need to quickly capture critical insights from a steady and complex steam of data. Researchers at the EIOC are advancing visual analytics methods for grid operations, thereby enhancing decision-making in data-rich control room environments. By developing intuitive and focused visualizations, the EIOC helps operators access critical information without unnecessary distractions. At the EIOC, researchers have developed important tools, such as wind ramping visualization, wide-area situational awareness for renewables, contingency analysis displays, and an innovative cyber dashboard. These visualizations support efficient and informed decision-making, improving grid reliability, situational awareness, and operational effectiveness in dynamic energy system landscapes.
Advanced Grid Modeling
Modern power grids face unprecedented complexity from non-dispatachable generation, grid edge devices, battery energy storage systems, and evolving market structures, creating a critical need for advanced modeling to ensure reliable operations. At the EIOC, researchers leverage their expertise in electric power markets to create novel modeling tools and methods for evaluating technologies across various market conditions, policy frameworks, and regulatory environments. Combining high-fidelity simulators like GridLAB-D or GridPACK with operational testing environments, the EIOC enables assessments of a technology’s impacts on reliability, market dynamics, and system resilience. By using tools such as HELICS to integrate simulations that mimic both transmission and distribution systems, researchers gain deeper insights into how new technologies affect operations across the grid, ultimately supporting the seamless integration of smart grid advancements and diverse energy sources.
Cognitive Systems and Human Factors Research for Control Rooms
The EIOC serves as a preeminent testbed for advancing human factors research, facilitating the evaluation and introduction of new tools, interaction designs, and visualization solutions that enhance grid operator situational awareness. By leveraging simulated and actual data, the EIOC enables empirical studies with experienced power grid operators, focusing on issues like shared knowledge, sensemaking, and nontechnical barriers affecting decision-making during normal and abnormal operating conditions. These studies can reveal new insights into the psychology of operators, helping them respond to unforeseen circumstances with greater agility. PNNL researchers also use the EIOC to improve how operator training is conducted. Through structured simulations and objective evaluation methods, researchers can develop novel training programs that help operators develop the critical thinking skills and foresight necessary to respond quickly to events.
Grid Resilience and Emergency Operations
The EIOC supports grid resilience and emergency operations on multiple fronts, including research, training, and simulated exercises that include a broad range of stakeholders. The EIOC coordinates with utilities, vendors, and subcontractors to tailor training to each utility’s specific needs. The EIOC team can design and deliver everything from introductory or refresher courses for utility management or operator dispatch to advanced training in the use of novel technologies and approaches. These realistic simulated exercises help operators navigate complex control room scenarios, prepare for high-impact events, and maintain reliable operations under challenging conditions. During real emergencies, both control rooms could be used as an incident command post or joint information center or be configured to serve as a backup emergency control center with specialized decision support and communication tools to enable coordinated action.
Grid Cyber and Physical Security
The EIOC plays a pivotal role in advancing grid cyber and physical security through its collaboration-focused initiatives, testbeds, and cutting-edge technologies. Its PRIME testbed, integrated with real-time simulation capabilities, enables co-simulation of transmission and distribution systems with Energy Management System (EMS) and Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) applications in the loop, and enhances situational awareness by visualizing cyber intrusions using tools such as the Operational Technology Cybersecurity Visualization Dashboard (OTVD). Researchers are also using AI and machine learning, through projects like Byzantine Fault Tolerance, to strengthen network monitoring and protect the energy system from cyberattacks. Through grid cyber- and physical-security research, the EIOC helps our nation’s energy systems stay secure, reliable, and ready for the future.