2022 IEEE PES ISGT-Europe

2022 IEEE
October 10 PES
-12 , 2022,
th th
ISGT-Europe
Novi Sad, Serbia
October 10th-12th, 2022, Novi Sad, Serbia

Smart Grid Visual Storytelling:

Past, Present, and Future
Thomas J. Overbye, Texas A&M University, overbye@tamu.edu

1
Acknowledgments

• Work presented here has been supported by a variety of sources

including the Texas A&M Smart Grid Center, PSERC, DOE, ARPA-E, NSF,
EPRI, many utilities and ISOs, and PowerWorld. Their support is gratefully
acknowledged!
• Slides also include contributions from many of my students, postdocs,
staff and colleagues at both TAMU and UIUC
• The views presented here are my own

2
 Greetings from the Texas A&M Energy and Power Group
(EPG)
This is from the Fall 2022 EPG dinner held at Dr. Kate Davis’s house on Oct 1, 2022

3
 Early electric grid control
Great Engineering Stories center; high tech for the day

• Many here participated in the greatest

engineering story of the 20th century. That is,
electrification, the development of the vast
networks of electricity that provide power for
the developed world.
Recent ERCOT control room
• All of us our in what I think will be the greatest
engineering story of the first half of the 21 st
century -- the development of a sustainable
energy infrastructure for the entire world
– Of course electricity is going to play the starring role!

Bottom image: www.tdworld.com/disaster-response/article/21156928/when-minutes-are-critical

4
A Bright Electric Future

• Our electric energy future could be quite bright!

• Electric grids worldwide are in a time of rapid transition, with many
positive developments including the addition of large amounts of
renewable generation, transportation electrification, smart grid controls,
etc.
– The grid of the future is likely to be quite different from the one of the recent past
• There are lots of good engineering
challenges and it is a great time for
students entering the field!!

Image source: US EIA International Energy Outlook, 2021

5
Overview

• However, there are lots of concerns with this transition, particularly in

dealing with electric grid resilience and increasingly electric grid complexity
• Meeting these opportunities and challenges requires better techniques for
understanding the operation of electric grids (past, present, and especially
for the future).
• We also need to effectively convey the story of our rapidly changing smart
grid to a wide variety audiences including policymakers
• This presentation focuses on how better electric grid operations storytelling
can help us achieve this desired future
• This is a great opportunity for smart grid innovation!

6
Electric Grids Create Lots of Data

• Power system operations and planning are a rich source of data

– SCADA has traditionally provided
a grid data at scan rates of
several seconds
– Thousands of PMUs are now deployed
providing data at 30 times per second
– In planning many thousand of studies
are now routinely run, with a single
stability run creating gigabytes
– Studying future grid configurations and
scenarios is very data intensive

7
An Example: East-West Dynamics Study

• One project in 2020 looked at the dynamic aspects of an ac

interconnection of the Eastern Interconnect and the WECC (with a follow
up project now starting)
– We did lots of dynamic simulations
some going out for minutes
– The Model has 110,000 buses,
244 different types of dynamic
models, 48,000 model instances
• No major showstoppers with this interconnection
• A human factors challenge was to know what happened in a simulation,
and then to explain the results to a variety of different audiences

8
Motivations for The Grid Storytelling Approach

• One motivation has come from my interacting with many in the power
field, and realizing they really don’t know how electric grids operate either
during normal operation or during emergency operations
– Of course how grids operate of
course varies by location
– At Texas A&M we are developing a
simulation environment to give
people a more hands-on experience
in grid operations, both for routine
situations and when the grid is
quite stressed

9
Motivations for The Grid Storytelling Approach, cont.

• A second motivations is in 2020-2021 Anjan Bose and I wrote a white

paper for DOE titled, “Electricity Transmission System Research and
Development: Grid Operations” [1]
– For paper I did quite a literature search on grid operations and found that over the
last several decades there are many papers on new algorithms, mostly applied to
small grids, but very little about how the grid is actually operated or on how well
existing algorithms are actually applied to grid operations
• For example, how well does state estimation really work, when and why does it fail

• For the most part the story of electric grid operations isn’t being told,
certainly not in most of the archival literature

[1] www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/202105/Grid%20Operations%20Bose%20Overbye_0.pdf
10
Motivation for The Grid Storytelling Approach, cont.

• A third motivation came from the first two lines in [1],

“Over the decades of the development of visual analytics techniques, researchers created
sophisticated visual analytics tools for analysts to explore complex problems involving large
amounts of data. However, when such tools and findings are demonstrated to those who lack
visual analytics knowledge and skills, it is not unusual to get feedback such as “fancy visuals,
cool interactions, but what does this mean?”

• This led us into the literature looking at

taking electric grid data and using
it to develop an integrated and
seamless story

[1] S. Chen, et. al., “Supporting Story Synthesis: Bridging the Gap between
Visual Analytics and Storytelling”, IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 26, July 2020, pp. 2499- 2516
11
Motivation for The Grid Storytelling Approach, cont.

• A fourth motivation
is stories can
help get a message
noticed

12
Presentation in a Nutshell

• A goal of the presentation is to show how storytelling techniques can be

used to make sense of electric grid operations: past, present and especially
with the future
• A second goal is to encourage more storytelling in our technical literature
• The ultimate goal is to help in developing a better electric future
• Storytelling associated with the smart grid is quite broad. The main focus
here is on techniques for eventually mostly auto-creating short (on the
order of a few minutes) videos that tell an electric grid operations story
– The videos may have audio narration, though the ones presented here do not
• Before getting into the details, some background is helpful

13
Big Data is Nothing New

• Essentially every day any person with normal senses takes in a vast
amount of data
– Some we’ll remember for a lifetime but most is quickly forgotten
• Any collective human experience generates lots of data, with again
most quickly forgotten, but still a lot is retained if nothing else in our
memories
• People have been storing data for many years, with the Library of
Alexandria containing perhaps a half a million scrolls before it burned in
48 AD
• Historically most data wasn’t explicitly stored, again except in the
memories of the participants
14
Making Sense of Our History

• The challenge has been how to make sense of this collection of data, and
pass it on to others
• Common means of synthesizing and communicating have included books,
drawings, paintings, illustrations, songs
– More recently recordings, movies,
computer programs, computer animations
• Throughout we have primarily used stories,
with much of this storytelling oral, but
some written, some in paintings, and
more recently in movies and
computer animations

15
“The Voyage of Life” by Thomas Cole, 1842
In the paintings
Cole was trying to
take a lot of data
(e.g., many lives,
maybe America)
and convey it in a
compelling and
simple way

Cole was in his

early 40’s when
he painted this
and died before
age 50
16
Books by Edward Tufte are a Good Source for Historical
Images for Data Visualization
Illustration by Charles Minard from 1869 on Napoleon’s march to, and retreat
from Moscow in 1812; Called the “Best Statistical Graphic Ever Drawn”
422,000 troops
enter Russia in
June 1812; 10,000
are left in Dec.
1812

17
Stories and Storytelling

• A story is defined by Merriam-Webster as, “an account

of incidents or events”
– Stories can be historical or fictional, and told for entertainment,
education, or to convey moral or spiritual lessons (a parable;
“There was a man who had two sons..”)
• While storytelling often invokes its common meaning of
orally telling a story, more broadly its definition includes
a variety of ways of presentations including the video
animation approach given here Frank Baum wrote,
The Wizard of Oz;
• The focus of the slides is how to use storytelling The book The
techniques to convey information about electric grid Master Key is from
operations 1901
Image source: spectrum.ieee.org/l-frank-baum
18
Type of Electric Grid Stories We Could Tell

• Telling the full story of the grid is too big to present

– A good book on the North American grid is The Grid by Julie Cohn
– The first chapters in Analytic Research Foundations for the Next-
Generation Electric Grid ( National Academies Press, 2016;
www.nap.edu/21919) provide some background

• A focus could be on a portion of the grid for a short time

– August 14, 2003 Blackout
• Or over larger time periods for a few components
• Or a combination
– J. Cohn, “When the Grid Was the Grid: The History of North
America’s Brief Coast-to-Coast Interconnected Machine,”
IEEE Proceedings, January 2019
19
Example Short Stories to Tell: Past, Present

• For a particular utility or ISO, short (a few minutes each) videos of the top
20 most interesting operations scenarios (past)
– Audience: new engineers and other employees
• The operational history of a device (e.g., braking resistor, key transmission
line, series capacitor) (past) (e.g., “Ned the phase shifter”)
– Audience: engineers, researchers
• A summary of what happened in an electric grid over the last day, week or
shift (present)
– Audience: Executives, operators, engineers
• Setting up an interactive simulation (past, present, future)
– Audience: Broad depending on the simulation detail
20
Example Short Stories to Tell: Future

• Most engineering is forward looking: we learn from the past to help provide a
better future
• Application of historical weather or other high impact events to the grid of
today Audience: Broad including engineers, researchers, students
– For example during Feb 2021 College Station got
down to 5 F, whereas in Jan 1949 it got down to -3 F
• Normal and abnormal days in the life of the 2040
grid
– Audience: Broad including policymakers
• Developing and showing predictions of the
future makes for challenging storytelling
21
A Computer Animation Telling the Story of the US Civil War
in Four Minutes
• Nothing can fully tell the full story of the US Civil War, but there is a
computer animation at the Abraham Lincoln Museum (Springfield, IL) that
tells quite a bit of the story in four minutes

22
The Basics of Storytelling

• More papers on storytelling associated with scientific and information

visualization have appeared recently with [1] providing a good survey
• People tend to like stories, but it helps to know what point you would like to
convey!
– What is the purpose?
– How much time is available to tell the story?
– With technical storytelling you need to know
your audience; e.g., what electric grid familiarity?
– Basics of a story are pretty common: setup and
characters, tension, action, climax, resolution
• Tension and action can rise and fall a number of times
[1] C. Tong, et. al., “Storytelling and Visualization: An Extended Survey,” Information, 2019, vol. 9, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/info9030065

23
A Great Example:
The 8/14/03 Blackout Report
• The 8/14/03 Blackout Report does a great
job of telling the story of the event
– Chapters 1 to 4 are the setup and characters,
Chapters 5 tension rising and action, Chapter 6
climax, Chapters 7, 10 resolution (Chapters 8
and 9 are on nuclear and cyber)
• At 200 plus pages it is akin to a feature
length file (and deservedly so)
• How could it be told in an hour long
presentation or in a few minute video?

Image from 8/14/03 report, which is available at www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf

24
A Quite Short Story I Like to Share: Grid Frequencies
During the 2022 Super Bowl

Image provided by
Dr. Mack Grady
of Baylor University

25
Electric Grid Resiliency: A Great Source for Stories!

Left image source is from the 53rd North American Power Symposium keynote address by
Dan Smith of Lower Colorado River Authority, November 2021; credit NATF
26
Aside: Real versus Synthetic Grids

• When available I prefer to work with

real (actual) grid models and data
• However access to actual power grid models is
often restricted (CEII), and this can be a particular
concern with storytelling where the focus is on clearly
showing aspects of grid strengths and weaknesses
– Models and data cannot be freely shared with other
researchers, and even presenting results can be difficult
• A solution is to create entirely synthetic (fictitious)
models the mimic characteristics of actual models
– Kudos to the US DOE ARPA-E for funding work over the
last eight years in this area; “realistic but not real”
27
Large-Scale Synthetic Grid Models and Results are Now
Available
• There are now synthetic grid models that go up to an 82,000-bus one
grid modeling the contiguous US (CONUS)
– Our synthetic grids have embedded geographic coordinates; the TAMU ones
are available at electricgrids.engr.tamu.edu
• The widespread availability of these grids is greatly helping research!
• There are lots of challenges with synthetic grids with one being that
they have no significant operational history and people really don’t
have an intuitive feel for their operation

28
82,000 Bus Synthetic Grid
The different colors
indicate different
nominal kV voltages,
with green 765, orange
500, red 345, blue 230,
black lower.

This shows the

grid, but doesn’t tell
any story about the
grid

29
Example 82K Visualizations:
Elements for Developing Stories

Each image is
part of a
potential story

30
Leveraging the Available Data

• What story can be told depends on the available data

– For the more distant past there is more limited data
– For the near past and present lots of data is now available, but there are data
access costs and distribution limitations (e.g., CEII concerns)
– The future can only be simulated, but lots of data can be available; we are now
simulating grids (present
and future) using
historical weather
– Synthetic grids avoid CEII
concerns; but a consistent
story needs to be told

31
Developing The Story Narrative

• There are a number of ways of developing a story narrative (an ordered

sequence of connected events), with [1] providing some good background
• A standard way of developing a video is to use a storyboard, which is a
graphic organizer of the different scenes
– Dates back to Disney in the 1930’s
• When applied to data analysis, an approach is to develop “findings”
(extracted pieces of information) and to arrange the findings as “story
slices” [2]
[1] K. Padia, K.H. Bandara, C.G. Healey, “A System for Generating Storyline Visualization using Hierarchical Task Network Planning,”
Computers and Graphics, vol. 78, 2018, pp. 64-75
[2] S. Chen, et. al., “Supporting Story Synthesis: Bridging the Gap between Visual Analytics and Storytelling”, IEEE Trans. on
Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 26, July 2020, pp. 2499- 2516

32
February 2021 Temperatures and the Grid
 A Nice Example of a Very Short Story

• A nice example of a 35 second, two slice story is at fnetpublic.utk.edu/

– YouTube link (the commercial is not part of the story) www.youtube.com/watch?
v=H7y-oJYpDkM
This animation shows several
seconds of grid behavior

34
Another Nice Example

• The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has some nice, short (about
one minute each) animation visualizations associated with the North
American Renewable Integration Study at
– www.nrel.gov/analysis/naris.html This animation shows the operation
of a grid over the course of a day

Another good link on electric grid

storytelling is at
nationalrenewableenergylab.mediu
m.com/storytelling-in-the-u-s-
power-sector-nrels-standard-
scenarios-da76ed506882

35
Midwest Wind Drought Event Jan 2020

• We how have worldwide hourly weather data, going back to the 1940’s,
so we can create stories for many events. One was a wind drought that
occurred in the US Midwest in late January 2020

How would this event affect the grid

of 2030?
36
Midwest Wind Drought Animation

37
Developing the Story Slices

• Define the question (i.e., the story you want to tell)

– For example: ISO operational highlights from last week, an interesting event in a
utility’s history, operational history of an series capacitor, a wind drought impacting
the grid of the future, an GMD or physical attack, a cyber attack
• Gather and clean the data
– What data is available can limit the question (e.g. PMUs?)
• Use some of the available data analysis techniques to determine the
findings
• Determine the best ways to visualize the findings into the story slices

38
Some Helpful Storytelling Insights

• The story does not need to be told in linear, uniform time; allow the time
line to fit the story
– Set the stage, and then focus on the times
with the most action; rewinding time can be
used if multiple events are occurring
simultaneously, or for showing the
consequence of both not doing
and doing an action
• The geographic footprint can
varying based on the location of
the action; zooming and panning
can help to provide context
Image source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Avenue

39
Nonlinear Timeline Examples in the
8/14/03 Blackout Report

The report is available at www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf

40
August 14, 2003 Image with a Very Nonlinear Scale
 Different Views in the 8/14/03 Report

www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf
42
24K Grid Examples for Story Slices
(from Farnaz Safdarian)

43
A Short 37-Bus Example
24 Hour Grid Narrative (Jess Wert)
Audience: People with some grid knowledge with visualization but none with this
grid. Goal is to provide an short example of grid storytelling.

A
SLACK345
20%
MVA
A
29%
MVA

218 MW
1.02 pu PI NE345
54 Mvar
slack
A A A
38% 38% 22%
1.02 pu OAK345 MVA MVA SLACK138 MVA

1.01 pu PI NE138
A
A
48% 17% A
1.03 pu
MVA
MVA 18%
OAK138 MVA
1.00 pu 33 MW A
50% 1.02 pu
13 Mvar MVA
A
A
16.0 Mvar 18 MW
39% 39% 1.02 pu PI NE69
MVA
MVA 5 Mvar 37 MW
A
17 MW A
1.02 pu OAK69 BUCKEYE69 43% 37% 13 Mvar
1.01 pu MVA 3 Mvar MVA
A
23 MW 26% 1.01 pu APPLE69 A
A MVA 56%
6 Mvar MVA
PALM69
MVA A
1.01 pu WI LLOW69
A 29% 21 MW
ASH138 31% MVA
MAPLE69 7 Mvar
MVA
A
A
64% 4.8 Mvar
12 MW MVA A MVA

5 Mvar 19 MW 1.00 pu 27%

MVA
8 Mvar A
1.00 pu CEDAR138
16% ORANGE69 A
MVA LOCUST69 27%
1.00 pu A A
MVA
WALNUT69 58 MW 34% 64%
MVA MVA
51 MW 40 Mvar
45 MW
15 Mvar A
1.02 pu CEDAR69
12 Mvar 29%
29.0 Mvar MVA
PECAN69 0.99 pu 140 MW
14.3 Mvar
1.00 pu 56 MW
12.8 Mvar A
47% 45 Mvar
A
MVA 13 Mvar PLUM138
53% 0 MW
A MVA
A 26% 0 Mvar
26% MVA
A
MVA 58 MW A
41% 14 MW
0.997 pu 65% PEAR138
36 Mvar MVA 1.00 pu MVA 4 Mvar
0.99 pu MAPLE69 A
A
37%
A
64% MVA OLI VE69 1.02 pu
POPLAR69 23% 33 MW MVA A
MVA 7.4 Mvar 19%
10 Mvar 1.01 pu A
PEAR69 20% MVA
A 1.01 pu MVA

15 MW 33% 15 MW
A MVA
3 Mvar 42% SPRUCE69 A
106 MW 5 Mvar
MVA
1.00 pu 64% 8 Mvar A
MVA 52%
MVA
A
36 MW A
1.01 pu
A 22% 11%
60 MW MVA 10 Mvar 7.2 Mvar MVA A
MVA A
12 Mvar 54%
1.00 pu 1.00 pu CHERRY69 MVA
0.0 Mvar A
MVA

38% 45 MW 14 MW BI RCH69
MVA
1.00 pu REDBUD69 0 Mvar
PEACH69 2 Mvar
1.02 pu
23 MW
22 MW 0 MW
A A
6 Mvar 14 MW A
20 MW 57% 59% 15 Mvar 0 Mvar 23%
MVA MVA 3 Mvar MVA
30 Mvar
1.02 pu ELM138 ELM345
PEACH138 1.02 pu LEMON69 42 MW
1.00 pu
2 Mvar
1.01 pu TULI P138 A
30%
MVA
A A
25% 43% 150 MW
MVA 1.01 pu LEMON138 MVA
A A
-0 Mvar
37% 53%
MVA MVA

150 MW
A
-0 Mvar
37%
MVA
1.03 pu
1.02 pu A

44
43%
MVA
37-Bus Example Story Slices

Normal Time Variable Time

45
A Synthetic 6700 Bus Example

46
A Short Story Example

47
Innovation, Creativity and Fun are Encouraged

• Leveraging well known stories can help add

impact
• For example, rather than “A Christmas Carol” by
Charles Dickens, it could be “A Grid Carol”
– The grid of the past, present, and potential future,
with the clear meaning that the present needs to
change to avoid a very undesired future
– Scrooge: “Assure me that I yet may change these
shadows you have shown me by an altered life?“
– Scrooge could be grid ignorance by policymakers

Top image: from Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of
Christmas. With Illustrations by John Leech. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843. First
edition. Wiki Commons. ; bottom https://www.pinterest.com/pin/122160208615926317/
48
Summary

• Electric grids have many stories that can be told, past, present and future
• How to tell these stories is a topic that is seldom discussed, and is an
area in need of more research
• There also need to be more electric grid stories in the technical literature
• This presentation has provided at least some coverage of electric grid
storytelling, focusing on the development of shorter videos
• Using mostly existing techniques these stories can be developed and
effectively told

49
Thank You! Questions? For further reading there is a 2022
Kansas Power and Energy
Conference paper available at
overbye.engr.tamu.edu/publications/

50