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World's Largest Visualization Analytics Display
An anonymous reader writes "An 80-foot wide visualization screen at California ISO graphically displays sensor readings from thousands of smart meters as well as provides predictive analytics. By analyzing the grid and environmental inputs like where the wild fires are burning, Space-Time Insights claims its algorithms head off power outages before they can materialize, turning California ISO operators into forecasters instead of damage controllers. If it keeps the lights on and the air conditioners running, I'm all for it!"
80-foot HD wall monitors, 8 LCDs on every desk... but no high-def picture of the setup.
California ISO, I am disappoint.
Unless you don't consider scoping out the Dallas Cowboy's Cheerleaders on the big-screen to be "analysis".
Very nice but, what's this good for anyway? Nothing. Like every oher "control room big display", this is just there to make it look good in pictures. It doesn't have any real use. I'm not sure if we should blame this on NASA or hollywood. People seem to think that a control room needs a big display for... stuff. In reality it just "looks good" but doesn't add any real value or increase productivity.
Geospatial technology? Breakthrough? Worried about more data?
This article reads like an add for cosmetics! "They can't handle the data, we made it shiny and all their problems went away!"
REALLY? They drew some heat maps and used existing data to identify choke points. OoooOOHHHHHHH! Now I'm some kinda of impressed. And to do what, exactly? Make rolling blackouts easier to manage? Create jobs so some monkey looking at shiny data can ask plants to ramp up? Or press a button to activate some SCADA function?
Give me a break. This is a tremendous waste of technology. Something like it was surely wanted, perhaps warranted, but this stinks of "data overload"
They've just turned a gigantic dataset into a gigantic waste of money instead of a tool. Let me know how it all turns out.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Californias power infrastructure is massively defective, and outages are similar to third world countries. You can not "test" in quality. Money would be better spent building solid reliable infrastructure replacing the existing. Electric power fails more than once a year, and gas lines explode in residential areas. It should be the norm to *never* have electric outages.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Of course they can predict power outages... Whenever they first turn on their entire infrastructure for running their analytics display, they probably cause a sufficient blip that when done at the right time, can trigger a widespread outage.
I am disappointed to see so many jump immediately into negative commentary. The utility of the display is that it provides a central point for everyone to see the same events while preserving individual workstations for the actual task at hand and effecting the proper response. Predictive analytics and forecasting are essential for the scientific management of ALL operations and analytics itself is devoted to the "pretty" presentation of these results so that they are acted upon by the correct agencies (i.e. managers) more quickly. If you want to investigate the real math and programming behind this of course it's not going to be in an article on analytics - that is the territory of OR.
Seems that if you need 8 monitors on your desk and 80 feet of wall screen then you are doing it wrong.
And that's the largest?
Maybe linearly, but I'm guessing that some of the CAVE systems offer more in terms of area of display when you scale to 6 surfaces. Or what's the largest hyperwall?
Can we come up with some meaningful measurements of data display, before someone tries setting a world record for the heaviest or ugliest?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
"Understanding the ISO
The ISO operates a robust and reliable wholesale power system that balances the need for higher transmission reliability with the need for lower costs, and acts as a key platform to achieve California’s clean energy goals."
wow. what does that mean? because i just read it, and i dont "understand the ISO" .
what the do these people do all day?
very interesting.
When I was a contractor at IBM Research in the speech group a little over a decade ago, I built a voice-operated display wall from used IBM ThinkPads (It looked a bit like the multi-unit display screen from "Jeopardy" with big borders). My supervisor was a bit shocked when he came back from a two week vacation (when I built it), but he got over it thankfully and fortunately I was not in the room to hear the swearing when he saw it for the first time. :-) It was only possible with the help and cooperation of a few other staff at IBM who shall remain nameless, but have my thanks. I suggested with a little bit of engineering, ThinkPads could be redesigned to snap together and that might be a new selling point for their future usefulness. I still think it is a great idea (if for no other reason than to avoid sending beautiful laptops to "the crusher"), but it was not picked up on much then. I suggested a Watson-like system to go with it, so you could interactively use the display wall via voice to create new inventions and better designs while walking around in front of the display wall, although what I actually implemented back then as far as voice was more like "show slashdot on screen number 5".
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.