PowerWorld - Retriever Software

PowerWorld Retriever was recently selected for NERC’s ambitious Situational Awareness for NERC, FERC, and Regional entities(SAFNR Version 2). The project will produce a first-of-its-kind nationwide real-time power grid reliability monitoring site in NERC’s Electricity Sector Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

Supported Sources

Retriever connects to external, real-time data sources to import and display real-time data.  Currently compatible data source types include:

• Flat-text data sources having a flexible, user-defined format – Flat-text sources can reside on LANs and/or WANs
• ODBC data sources using SQL
• PI System, a data aggregation and archival tool developed and marketed by OSISoft
• eDNA, a data aggregation and archival tool developed and marketed by InStep software

Retriever can import the most recently available set of data from one or more of these data sources. The data retrieval can either be initiated manually or set to occur at specified intervals. Furthermore, for PI and eDNA data sources, Retriever can simulate the evolution of a system over time by accessing archived historical data over a prescribed period. This feature, which will soon be extended to SQL and flat-text sources, allows the user to produce a movie of system events for use in presentations, operator training, or post-mortem system analysis.

Functionality

Data access has been optimized so that Retriever imports the real-time data extremely efficiently.  Retriever then maps the data to the appropriate fields in an underlying topology model. Once the values have been mapped to components in the model, Retriever’s visualization engine depicts the data in the clear, dramatic, and colorful way PowerWorld customers have come to expect.

PowerWorld Retriever Topology Processing (TP) may also be used to create a power flow case from actual system parameters in near real-time or from a system state captured in a data historian.

The goal of PowerWorld Retriever is to give operators a real-time or historic view of the power system and its various parameters quickly, accurately, and in a format that increases situational awareness. Retriever brings the visualization benefits of PowerWorld products to the control room, giving system operators the right information at the right time to help make informed decisions.

Tour

Please take a moment to view the Retriever Tour to learn more about the capabilities and benefits of PowerWorld Retriever.

Wide-Area Network Monitoring

PowerWorld Corporation has been participating in the North American SynchroPhasor Initiative (NASPI) to develop specialized tools and features for wide-area phasor monitoring in PowerWorld Retriever.

PowerWorld Retriever is the weather map of the control room, providing an instant overview of wide-area system health and helping operators discern what is most important during system emergencies.

Synchrophasor Visualization in PowerWorld Retriever

Contouring shows phase angle, with numeric readings for angle differences across path and flashing red for alarm condition. Data are fictitious and for illustration only.

openPDC Data Stream in PowerWorld Retriever

Real-time contour at more than 30 frames per second, showing frequency from the Grid Protection Alliance openPDC Test Data Stream. The feature uses OpenGL graphics rendering and is in beta development. Data are fictitious and for illustration only

Simultaneous visualization of related quantities such as voltage magnitude, phase angle, and angle differences across transmission paths; PowerWorld Retriever is ideal for wide-area monitoring and visualization:

• Flexible specification of system reference angle;
• Connection to TVA’s DatAWare host, allowing eastern interconnect utilities and RTOs to view the same displays at the same time
• Tolerance of communication faults to recognize temporary dropouts of readings
• Automatic topology processing to create a power flow case from a bus-breaker system model and state estimator