PNNL

Abstract

Power grid dispatchers can now train like airline pilots—using simulators that provide faulty readings designed to throw them off—thus teaching them how to compensate for instrument failure and continue to safely and reliably operate the grid. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have developed a hands-on training curriculum that uses a dispatcher-training simulator to evoke loss of situational awareness—originally an aviation term that more generally means “the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future” (Endsley 1988). The objective was to learn if increased awareness led to better recognition and troubleshooting of off-normal conditions. With the help of AREVA T&D, a worldwide provider of transmission and distribution products including grid simulator software, PNNL created specific scenarios to simulate misleading, false data as part of the training curriculum.