Can Augmented and Virtual Reality Play a role in the Future Energy Landscape?

In the coming decade, the global energy landscape is likely to undergo significant transformations as part of the clean energy transition. Maintaining secure, reliable, safe, and affordable electricity throughout this transition remains important worldwide. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) may emerge as powerful tools with the potential to reshape the energy sector.

AR overlays digital information and virtual objects onto the real world, enhancing the user’s perception of their environment, while VR immerses users in entirely virtual environments, disconnecting them from the physical world. Beyond their conventional entertainment applications, these technologies are altering the energy industry, enhancing various aspects of energy systems, such as design, operation, maintenance, modelling, training, and remote monitoring of the power systems. 

EPRI have been developing its Control Center of the Future research, in recent years, with focus on advancements in innovative technologies to manage and optimize reliability and efficiency for system operators. As part of this research, EPRI has been exploring the potential of AR and VR within transmission control centers to help monitor the network. 

In cooperation with Southern Company, and Vstream, a leading digital design company from Ireland, EPRI has developed a pioneering prototype of a 3D virtual transmission network – explorable via a VR headset.

The team of researchers converted a sample, synthetic   transmission grid from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) with simulation data into a 3D model in virtual space with grid components such as lines, generators, substations, and transformers, etc. The project team then developed a working VR prototype that consisting of three virtual views of the grid, combined with integrated data simulation:

• A bird’s-eye view giving a high-level overview of the network, similar to a large videowall display giving high-level situational awareness.
• A dashboard view, summarizing the network data into color-coded trends and with statistical information about the specific processes. This gives functional or process-level situational awareness.  
• A ground view that allows the user to immerse themselves fully in the network to explore network elements and data points. 

These different perspectives allow the user to interact with the data and get a deeper understanding of the scenarios that may affect or impact the network.  The design palette and solution use color to promote awareness and activity; elements that are abnormal or outside limits are colored, red, orange, or yellow. 

The prototype demonstrates 29 scenarios when a line goes out of service and immediately displays the impact on all the other assets within the grid. The user can scroll through the different scenarios at their own speed to assess results. 

The key objective of the prototype is to explore new visualizations of data and how interacting with that data in a three-dimensional, immersive extended reality environment may improve the speed of awareness, analysis, and decision-making.

The prototype can be adapted to incorporate sections of real networks without a major redesign effort. It can also be scalable to include larger networks and new visual features, in particular weather, geographic location, customer sites, and outages.

Given the pivotal role control centers play in ensuring the future’s dependable, resilient, and sustainable energy transmission systems, exploring cutting-edge technologies like AR and VR is crucial. These innovations equip operators with the tools needed to make informed decisions that maintain reliability, and security as energy systems navigate the complexities of the evolving landscape.