ERCOT- the Electric Reliability Council of Texas – may well be one of themost important institutions in the state of Texas. The engineers,technicians and other operators have the daunting task of monitoringand managing the electricity grid. One mistake might cause homes andfactories to go dark…

In line with its commitment to constantly raise its reliability and cost-effectiveness, the Texas grid operator recently moved to a new controlcenter. The new control room features a fully-fledged Barco visualizationsolution – a curved video wall composed of 30 large (80’’) cubes, twoAX6 video wall controllers and CMS control room management software– to offer a clear, customizable overview of the region’selectrical grid.

Electric Reliability Council of Texas, US

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A clear view of the Texas electric grid, powered by Barco

“In close cooperation with theERCOT team, AVI-SPL and Barcodeveloped a total visualizationsolution – display cubes, videowall controllers and control roommanagement software – to helpERCOT operators get a clear viewof the Texas electricity grid.”

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M30255-R00-0911-AN September 2011

Barco is an ISO 9001 registered company.The information and data given are typical for the equipment described. However any individual item is subject to change without any notice.© September2011 by Barco

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Ever since its establishment over 40years ago, ERCOT has been on a mis-sion to provide Texans with a world-class, cost-effective and reliableelectric grid and efficient electricitymarkets. Managing the flow of electricpower to 23 million Texas customers,across 40,000 miles of transmissionlines, is a significant challenge thatrequires the most reliable, state-of-the-art equipment, especially at thecontrol rooms, which serve as theorganization’s nerve center.

Technicians and engineers at ERCOT’scontrol centers manage the flow of elec-tricity 24/7. In addition, they must alsolimit, increase or redirect power to man-age congestion on transmission lines.Over the past ten years, they've kept aneye on the status of the electric grid ona rear-projection video wall, which wasequipped with proprietary tools. Whenmaking plans to install a new building,the Texas electric grid operator decidedto swap its existing wall for a new solu-tion.

User friendly, large size and long life

A team of people from the operationsdepartment, a network representativeand a systems architect each broughttheir own wish list of changes to therequest for proposal. Based upon experi-ences with the previous solution, theyagreed to look for a large-sized wallwith sufficient screen real estate to dis-play the grid and all other additionalinformation. The solution had to featurelong-life components to help ERCOT saveon operating costs, and include a highlyreliable, easy-to-use controller thatwould enable the creation of a desktopenvironment on the entire wall to dis-play a multitude of different sources.

Reliability and quality

Among the bidders was Tampa-basedAVI-SPL, an expert in Audio/Video solu-tions. Its Control Room Group made

three different proposals, based on thehardware and software of three manu-facturers. The Barco proposal offeredreliability and quality (brightness,stitched screen and auto-calibration)with Barco’s large-size (80’’) cubes. Theadvanced controller and control roommanagement software met ERCOT’s rigidnetwork security demands and allowsfor easy display wall management, con-tent sharing and collaboration.

Visualizing the grid and more

Since the start of 2011, ERCOT’s operatorsnow visualize the electric grid and manyother types of ancillary information onone large display wall, consisting of 30edge-matched OV-815 80” diagonalcubes arranged in a 10x3 screen matrix.Two TransForm AX6 display wall con-trollers are installed in the base of thedisplay wall, residing on the corporateand the EMS networks. They enable theoperators to display any type of videoand data sources (Blu-Ray, DVD for train-ing, play audio) in all kinds of configura-tions.

Any time, any place

Thanks to its networked concept, theCMS software enables users to easilyconnect to all the different sources inreal time, whether on the wall in thecontrol room, on small LCD displays oron operator workstations in other officesand meeting rooms, including the war

room. It further offers virtually unlimitedpossibilities to control and manage dis-plays and sources intuitively and to easi-ly and efficiently collaborate. Thesidebars – intuitive pop-up GUIs - loadedon the workstations help operators cre-ate and share mark-ups and maps with-out having to publish them on the wall.Each shift of operators has evendesigned their own screen configura-tions, which they can display at thetouch of a button.

Consistent image quality for manyyears on end

As for image quality, the control roomoperators can rest assured they’ll beable to view bright, consistent images inSXGA+ resolution on the Barco wall formany years to come. The patentedstitched screen design (the displays arejoined together by tiny wires spacedapart every few inches) ensures there isno loss of text information spanning hor-izontal and vertical cube borders. Theactive Sense6 system, which comes asstandard with each Barco OV-815 cube,achieves across-the-wall brightness andexcellent color balance, eliminating theneed for maintenance and manualadjustments, such as recalibration andbalancing. The easy upgrade path of theBarco set-up further allows the Texasgrid operator to replace the cubes’ mer-cury lamps with more energy-efficientLED illumination in the near future, thushelping ERCOT to further optimize thecost of its visualization solution.

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