A Virtual Reality Based Approach to Improve Human Performance and to Minimize Safety Risks When Operating Power Electric Systems

Power systems require continuous operation for reasons of public safety, emergency management, national security and business continuity. Companies today control an electric system by means of 2D line diagrams, whereas a substation in the field is a 3D space. There exist situations where new control center operators have never been immersed into a real substation environment. When these operators visit a real electric substation, the environment is at minimum ‘strange’. This fact unquestionably reduces human performance when it comes to operating the electrical system, since a great deal of mental effort is required by the operator to associate both 2D and 3D worlds. There are situations where some modifications and replacements have to be executed within the real substation environment. Hence, to design such procedures on the 2D line diagram does not adequately reflect the reality of the field. For example, it is impossible, in this 2D scenario, to design the route taken by a truck carrying a huge electric component. In this case, safety factors also arise and need to be given due attention. It is important to seek new alternatives to ensure that systems are designed in a manner as to optimize human performance and minimizes risks, thus producing higher productivity, health and safety in the work place and safety in work processes. On the other hand, Virtual Reality (VR) is known as providing “the feeling of being there”. With the features provided by VR, it is possible to simulate all real operations of an electric substation with such precision that it has bearing on real world environments. For this reason, this paper proposes a Virtual Reality approach for the simulation, training and control of electric substations. In this approach, a virtual substation is realistically replicated according to its dimensions, using electric component data sheets, pictures, videos and floor plans. This is relevant as safety rules state that the distance between electrical components must be taken into account. Next, by means of a web service, data from a supervisory system is allocated to each component in the virtual substation, so the operator can attain access to all the information required for possible intervention, as is the case in real life. It is believed that all the features explored in this work have the capacity to increase human performance when operating a power electric substation.