Abstract
Energy providers face several technical and societal challenges with respect to renewable energies and smart energy systems. As central management units of energy supply systems, control rooms and their operators are especially affected by those changes. While reliability and safety of software systems for managing electric power grids is of utmost importance, their usability has to be ensured as well in order to allow for safe and efficient operations. Previous work has failed to address issues of work reengineering and user interface design for future smart energy control rooms due to insufficient collaboration of human-computer interaction researchers, energy informatics researchers and energy sector stakeholders. This paper describes challenges and approaches for ensuring usability of future smart energy control room systems. It is based on a human-centered design process within an interdisciplinary research project bringing together the aforementioned groups of experts. Results were derived from systematic literature review, workshops and surveys with control room operators as well as contextual inquiries in three control rooms. They concern both the process of realising software systems for managing electric power grids and applications characteristics with respect to user interface design. It is concluded that open and modular software systems require consistent user interfaces based on a style guide. Furthermore, software and usability engineering processes of energy control systems have to be aligned in order to ensure usability, safety and security.
Highlights
Control rooms, as “location[s] designed for an entity to be in control of a process” (Hollnagel and Woods 2005) in general, have changed considerably with respect to available information and communication technologies, human-machine task allocation, levels of automation and user interface design in many fields of application since the 1950s – among them the energy sector (see Fig. 1, cf. (Herczeg 2014)).Long-term societal and technical challenges (e.g. reducing greenhouse gas emissions, raising the share of renewable energies, implementing smart energy systems, cf. (Neureiter et al 2016; Santini and Tiefenbeck 2018)) will have an impact on the design of future “smart control room[s]” (Wang and Qi 2012)
ISONORM 9241-110-S questionnaire Fourty energy grid control operators participated in the inquiry about the usability in current control rooms between 14.03.2017 and 17.08.2017. 80% of the respondents worked in this position for more than five years
Usability of smart energy control room systems is of utmost importance for safe and reliable future energy grid management
Summary
As “location[s] designed for an entity to be in control of a process” (Hollnagel and Woods 2005) in general, have changed considerably with respect to available information and communication technologies, human-machine task allocation, levels of automation and user interface design in many fields of application since the 1950s – among them the energy sector (see Fig. 1, cf. (Herczeg 2014)).Long-term societal and technical challenges (e.g. reducing greenhouse gas emissions, raising the share of renewable energies, implementing smart energy systems, cf. (Neureiter et al 2016; Santini and Tiefenbeck 2018)) will have an impact on the design of future “smart control room[s]” (Wang and Qi 2012). As “location[s] designed for an entity to be in control of a process” (Hollnagel and Woods 2005) in general, have changed considerably with respect to available information and communication technologies, human-machine task allocation, levels of automation and user interface design in many fields of application since the 1950s – among them the energy sector (see Fig. 1, cf (Herczeg 2014)). Long-term societal and technical challenges (e.g. reducing greenhouse gas emissions, raising the share of renewable energies, implementing smart energy systems, cf (Neureiter et al 2016; Santini and Tiefenbeck 2018)) will have an impact on the design of future “smart control room[s]” (Wang and Qi 2012). Energy control room operators’ working conditions are characterised by high cognitive demands both in daily routine and under extraordinary circumstances even (Herczeg 2014; Schwarz 2015). Future smart energy control room systems must be designed in due consideration of these circumstances. Iterations are driven by insights from formative and summative evaluations with respect to users and their tasks
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