Aggregated Alert Heat Value for Power Grid Crisis Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
In electricity distribution networks, particularly smart grids, the overwhelming number of alerts during catastrophic events overwhelms network operations centers, making it difficult for operators to prioritize and manage crises effectively, impacting quality of service.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method that computes a 'heat value' for each status transmission from nodes in the network, aggregates these values to identify crisis situations, and prioritizes alerts based on urgency and importance, allowing operators to manage crises more efficiently by conveying meaningful information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If the NOC receives and processes all individual alerts during catastrophic events, then complete information about network status is obtained, but the overwhelming number of alerts overwhelms operators and makes effective crisis management difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple individual alerts into a single aggregated crisis alert. When a threshold number of alerts are received within a specified time window, the system combines them into one consolidated alert that represents the overall crisis situation, thereby reducing the number of individual alerts operators must process while preserving the essential information about the crisis event
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a simplified representation (copy) of the crisis situation by generating an aggregated alert that captures the essence of multiple individual alerts. This aggregated alert serves as a manageable copy of the complex crisis state, allowing operators to respond to the overall situation without being overwhelmed by individual alert details
2Productivity
If the NOC processes each alert individually in the order received, then all alerts are handled systematically, but the time required to identify and respond to the root cause of crises increases substantially
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary aggregation of alerts before presenting them to operators. By automatically combining multiple alerts into a single crisis alert in advance, the system prepares the information in a ready-to-use format that eliminates the need for operators to manually review individual alerts, thereby reducing crisis response time while maintaining systematic processing of all alert information
3Reliability
If hundreds or thousands of alerts are displayed to NOC operators, then complete coverage of network issues is achieved, but operators cannot effectively prioritize or manage the alerts
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges multiple individual alerts into a single aggregated crisis alert that represents the overall network crisis. This consolidation maintains comprehensive monitoring coverage by incorporating information from all individual alerts while dramatically simplifying the management interface that operators interact with, thereby reducing alert management complexity without sacrificing monitoring reliability
Data Source
AI summary
A computing system receives status transmissions from nodes within a portion of an electricity distribution network. The status transmissions include information related to hardware problems experienced by nodes within the portion of that network. The computing system determines a “heat” value for each of the status transmissions, where the heat value for a given transmission represents the operating conditions of, and/or the severity of hardware/software problems experienced by, the node responsible for sending that transmission. The computing system aggregates the heat values across the entire portion of the electricity distribution network and compares the aggregated heat values to a threshold value. When the aggregated value exceeds the threshold value, the computing system identifies a crisis situation arising within the portion of the electricity distribution network. The computing system may then convey information associated with the status transmissions to operators of the electricity distribution network.