Defining Expertise in the Electric Grid Control Room

Electric distribution utilities are on the brink of a paradigm shift to smart grids, which will incorporate new technologies and fundamentally change control room operations. Expertise in the control room, which has never been well defined, must be characterized in order to understand how this shift will impact control room operations and operator performance. In this study, the authors collaborated with a utility company in Vermont to define and understand expertise in distribution control room operations. The authors interviewed distribution control room operators, HR personnel, and managers and concluded that a control room expert is someone who has 7-9 years' experience in the control room and possesses certain traits, such as the ability to remain calm under pressure, effectively multi-task and quickly synthesize large amounts of data. This work has implications for control room operator training and how expertise is defined in the control room domain.