Macomber Map: Bringing situation awareness to an ISO control room

Operator decisions made in regional independent system operator (ISO) control rooms have major effects on whether lights stay on through extreme weather, high energy demand, and normal operations. Operators´ decisions require accurate and timely information. Human factors professionals have researched the need for situation awareness (SA) within the control room of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Several areas of potential SA improvement were noted, centering on improving high-level and wide-area views, reducing alarm and dust storms within the alarm system, providing a visual frame of reference to link equipment and physical location, improving naming conventions, and integrating data across multiple systems and tables. Following prototyping and user feedback, ERCOT developed the Macomber Map to implement these improvements.