Primate Technologies, Inc

Primate Technologies’ BlackBoard™ is a software product supporting visualization. It improves Situational Awareness and Operational Awareness for control room operations and securely presents information to authorized users outside of the control room.  

BlackBoard performs the following tasks:

• Digitization of physical mapboard and paper maps for electronic viewing;
• Electronic views of circuits and grid conditions that are manually entered by operators and dispatchers and/or updated by SCADA and Smart Meters;
• Views of real-time conditions, state estimator states and values, simulations of conditions or potential conditions, and contingencies for predictive analysis – all combined with other SA and OA system data (weather, security, crew locations, etc.);
• Providing a manual system for operators to track and update grid conditions when SCADA systems fail;
• Visual verification of system health of SCADA and other IT systems, including application level health;
• Replay of historical events for review of: 
  • previous real-time events and anomalies,
  • event based training of operators and dispatchers.

With BlackBoard, physical mapboards that are converted to video walls provide a multi-faceted (SCADA, weather, communication, crew location, etc.) view of the electric system on a large video surface or at an authorized users’ desktop. BlackBoard allows users to electronically view a service territory in its entirety or to quickly relocate a view to an individual sector as typically shown on paper maps. Views are of geographic and/or schematic maps of a service territory built from electronic maps that are already used and maintained by the utility or built from scratch by Primate’s team. 

Using BlackBoard, control-room personnel have a method to retain last-known state and values when SCADA or other primary data sources fail. Secondary sources for information may automatically be substituted when a primary data source fails. Should SCADA fail, operators and dispatchers may manually enter device states as noted by field crew, along with pins and notes allowing them to track grid and system conditions. BlackBoard provides this user interface that continues to work as a manual system during unplanned catastrophic events.

** BlackBoard works in conjunction with GridGuardian **

GridGuardian™  is Primate’s product for data collection and aggregation. GridGuardian helps utilities meet NERC recommendations by establishing an automated method to alert system operators and support personnel when there are significant changes to the grid, highlighting conditions that are not normal or expected.

GridGuardian provides the following:

• Data Retrieval and Aggregation of information from diverse sources;
• System Health Monitoring for monitoring systems at an application level; and
• Intelligent Alarm Processing to alert users of issues and anomalies.

Data Aggregator:  GridGuardian collects state changes and analog value changes (optionally, outside a deadband) and collects relevant tags, alarms, events, and program messages. Data obtained may be telemetered data for device states and associated values or data may be state-estimator values used to fill gaps for non-telemetered results or data may be contingency data displayed in conjunction with real-time status for predictive analysis.

Health Monitor:  GridGuardian is an independent and unprejudiced solution complementary to existing SCADA platforms that monitors SCADA systems (including the alarm monitoring applications) and other IT solutions at an application level. Any anomalies detected automatically alert power system operators and technical support of unusual occurrences.

Intelligent Alarm Processor:  GridGuardian collects data and associated quality conditions from source systems. Additionally, authorized users may define rules to automatically notify the appropriate utility staff of other abnormalities. This information is communicated via each individual’s uniquely preferred method and is also visually indicated in various ways based upon system conditions. If abnormalities persist beyond customer defined thresholds, GridGuardian can escalate the severity of the potential problem and inform additional staff of the escalating  issue. GridGuardian may automatically initiate more serious notifications to supervisors and managers to assist operators in maintaining system stability and reliability.

For a demonstration and more discussion with the Primate Technologies team, please visit our Booth #2346 at DistribuTECH 2022.

Also, please be sure to check out how Primate Technologies can offer practical solutions that can make significant improvements in the area of Grid Resiliency, as well as Primate’s Replay Server product description for information on how BlackBoard replays historical events in a user-friendly YouTube-style approach!

* BlackBoard is a trademark of Primate Technologies, Inc.

* GridGuardian is a trademark of Primate Technologies, Inc.

Utilities are being challenged to increase the resiliency of their control room operations, and Primate Technologies offers practical solutions that help our customers address this challenge.

Under normal conditions, Primate’s visualizations include information that is continuously acquired from diverse real-time sources.  Additionally, the displays can be complemented or annotated with user-entered pins and notes added by users via Primate’s desktop client.

When a mission critical source system becomes unavailable (e.g. the failure of an EMS/BMS, DMS/ADMS, OMS, or the failure of a communication system that causes significant loss of data), the Primate environment retains the last-known good value. 

With a change in operational mode, the Primate system can be decoupled from the unavailable SCADA system in an effort to avoid the contamination of data in the Primate environment. Then, the Primate system can become the primary system of record. 

This decoupling of the Primate system from the source system allows the control room staff to start operating from a display that shows the last-known values and then users may manually pin or toggle dynamic devices to indicate current system state. For customers with alternate data sources, Primate can directly receive information from the alternate data sources (data concentrators or alternate field equipment) for key/critical remote sites.  This data can continue to flow to the Primate display, which is then also augmented with manually pinned or toggled devices. Operators continue to use this independent visualization process until the source system is known to be available and stable.  

Various configurations are supported, helping utilities address the most salient resiliency needs. When combined with Primate’s native topology processor for network modeling, the energization status of the system can be visually indicated, even when the Primate display is completely decoupled from source systems’ data.  Since Primate’s network model is automatically built from the display content (patent pending), this maintenance-free feature provides significant value when other critical systems are unavailable.

Additionally, if there is a concern that a source system has been compromised, and the data that was recently received is contaminated, Primate’s Replay feature allows operators to easily walk-back in time, to inspect the condition of the system prior to the corruption and start updates from alternate sources and manual tracking and pinning from that point.

For a demonstration and more discussion with the Primate Technologies team, please visit our Booth #2346 at DistribuTECH 2022.

Also, please be sure to check out Primate Technologies’ BlackBoard™ & GridGuardian™ product descriptions for visualization & data aggregation and information enhancement, complemented by the Primate Technologies’ Replay Server product description for information on how BlackBoard replays historical events!

Primate's BlackBoard™ and GridGuardian™ servers aggregate events and other data from different sources. The last-known-good values for these events and data items are cached within the server. TileViewer™, a BlackBoard client viewer application, displays last known good values in near real time. The Primate Replay Server allows an authorized user to go back in time – to a specific window, as desired -- to review the historical events of data visually, regardless of the source of the data.

With Replay, study cases can be saved for trainers to training operators.  Alternatively, operators may choose to perform a post-event analysis and review, such as after a major storm. During shift changes, operators may also want to visually review important events from the previous shift. All events and other data are stored in such a way that it can easily be retrieved for later replay, including events from SCADA/EMS/(A)DMS/OMS, pins, notes, tags, TileViewer drawing tool objects, Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) data, and weather radar/lightning/alerts.

Replay records events constantly. There is no need to start and stop recording. When a configurable disk space quota is reached, older historical data is purged from the database, allowing space for the newest events and data. Saved study cases are separately stored and do not get purged.

During a replay, the user has the ability to select the desired replay time interval and replay speed. The Primate replay application pushes the historical data to BlackBoard’s TileViewer client, to be viewed on the current display map. All the normal, view-only TileViewer display features are available during historical data replay (pan, zoom, find or search information, toggle layers, view description of pins and notes, etc.).

Because the raw data is stored, the data may be replayed against any display, even a new display built after an incident. For example, if the customer has a geographic and a schematic display, the historical data can be replayed in any display. This could be used to give different views into the same historical timeline.

The TileViewer user interface provides the ability to bookmark a specific point in time in the historical data. This allows the user to quickly replay a session beginning at the defined bookmark.

When TileViewer is in replay mode, it presents an orange border, and a replay timestamp at the top of the display helps clearly distinguish the replay window from a window receiving real-time updates.

When replay is running, TileViewer will display the sequence of actions that have occurred between the replay begin timestamp and the replay end timestamp. Replay setting parameters can be adjusted to play back history at a faster or slower rate than events happened originally.

For a demonstration and more discussion with the Primate Technologies team, please visit our Booth #2346 at DistribuTECH 2022.

Also, please be sure to check out Primate Technologies’ BlackBoard™ & GridGuardian™ product descriptions for visualization & data aggregation and information enhancement, as well as how Primate Technologies can offer practical solutions that can make significant improvements in the area of Grid Resiliency.

* BlackBoard is a trademark of Primate Technologies, Inc.

* GridGuardian is a trademark of Primate Technologies, Inc.

* TileViewer is a trademark of Primate Technologies, Inc.  (TileViewer is a viewer within BlackBoard)