Interview of Fortum designers and operator designers

The Fortum designers were interviewed at VTT in 30^th January in 2008. Three designers (two system designers and one operator designer) participated in the interview session with people from VTT group.

5.2.2.1 Development process of the Fortum IRD pilot displays

The number of design meetings in which both Fortum system and operator designers and IFE designers participated was four. The first meeting was arranged in January 2007 and the last one in April in the same year. The sessions lasted either one day or two days. Some unofficial meetings between Fortum designers were arranged between these sessions. In the beginning the IFE designers carried out the design work after sessions, later they did some of the work online during sessions.

According to the Fortum designers, the basic division of responsibilities has been that the IFE designers in cooperation with the operator designers have designed the displays and the Fortum designers have technically developed them. The Fortum designers modestly commented that they themselves have not participated in the design as such, but only provided a link between IFE designers and the participating operator designers. According to Fortum designers, the collaboration between Fortum and IFE designers went on smoothly, even though they had had some controversies concerning the basic principles of the concept at the beginning of the project. For example, the operator designers hoped that numerical values could be presented in the graphs, but the IFE designers were against of this.

The design process was considered to be time-consuming, and it required time to understand the main features of the design principles. The interviewees also thought that the schedule of the design process was somewhat too tight: There should have been more time to think about what information should be presented and which information should be linked to which one.

The design process has not been based on the functional analysis of the target system, but instead the PMS-based overview displays for the primary and secondary side that have been designed earlier provided the starting point for the design of the IRDs. These earlier developed displays have, thus, been used as background information showing which components are necessary to show.

During the design process the IFE designers, Fortum designers and operator designers could quite easily decide what information has to be graphically presented. There were, however, some discussions whether a trend or a bar should be chosen. At the secondary side there are a lot of measurements that should be presented in one way or another. Because of the lack of space some information was presented by a bar even though a trend might have been a better form of presentation.

The Fortum designers and operator designers were quite happy of the fact all the relevant information could be presented. Some information that is important for the monitoring and operation of the plant has just been added and will still be added in the future. For example, more information of individual components is shown that was displayed in the first version of the Fortum IRD pilot displays.

Overall, the amount of information is order of the same magnitude than in the earlier designed PMS-based overview displays.

The layout of the process is different from that used in Loviisa displays. One reason for that is that the designers have had serious problems in putting the information on the display, and therefore they had to change the location of some symbols until a satisfactory compromise was reached.

The Fortum designers thought that that the project will continue in some form or another, since new questions have emerged during the project that should be investigated. For example, it is an open question whether these displays support operation and in which conditions. Another question that has emerged is whether the IRD displays could be used in the presentation of emergencies. One possibility that has been suggested is that key alarms could be presented on LSDs.

5.2.2.2 Main functions and usage situations of the IRD displays

In the interview it was thought that the IRD displays could be some kind of a support system for operators. LSDs should provide an overview of the state of the power process, and at the first hand they should support the management of the power process as a whole. That is, just by glancing the LSD, the operator should immediately see what is going on in the process. The LSD displays could also be a stand-alone system that is independent of the automation system. This

could be possible because the LSDs are only aimed for monitoring, and there is no need for a two-way transmission of information.

Overall, the IRD displays are a quite independent entity. On the other hand, consistency was thought to be an important design feature. For example, colour philosophy should be consistent, and the same set of colours should be used in all displays in the CR. It was also considered important that directions of flow are consistent with other displays.

The designers discussed whether the displays could also be used in other plant states. A general view was that it is important that it can be applied also in other plant states, for example, in hot shutdown and start-up. All in all, the IRD displays should help operators from the power level of some percents to 100 %, but different displays should be designed for cold shutdown, because in this state the turbine and its auxiliaries are not working. One possibility is that there would be one type of display for shutdowns and one type of display that is used between full power operation and shutdown. It was also hoped that the displays would change automatically after the change of a plant state. In this case, some information is needed telling operators that the state of the plant has changed. It was discussed whether these kinds of improvements could be developed in a continuation project of the existing project.

It was found during discussions that since critical information can be easily forgotten, information of the plant mode should be displayed. For example, information of whether the slow or fast shutdown mode is on should be shown on a LSD.

The interviewees thought it is important that maintenance-related information could be presented on LSDs. For example, they hoped that information of which components are under preparation could be shown. An open question, however, is whether information from the maintenance system can be transferred to the automation system.

5.2.2.3 Key features of the Fortum pilot displays

The aim of display normalization is to help operators to find the deviations from the normal, that is, to detect that the normal power operation is in danger or is lost. On the negative side, information of absolute parameter values is lost by normalization since because of scaling, areas of measurement that actually are different in size are of the same size on the IRD display. Operators may have difficulties in understanding the connection between the displayed information and the physical system and process. Overall, the Fortum designers thought the IRD displays are not very valuable in emergency situations, since in these conditions different instructions are used. Another problem is that normalized graphical information loses its value when the plant state changes. For example, since the line showing the measured value does not stay any longer at the middle of the trend graph after the change of the plant state, the normalization has to be done again after it.

According to Fortum designers and operator designers, single bars and trends scattered here and there over the display are quite useless, especially if their scale is not known. But if they are put horizontally along the same line and the alarm limits are shown they can be compared in respect whether one of them deviates from the other ones. Another issue related to the use of normalized trends and graphs is whether some changes of process parameters cause larger changes than other ones. For example, even a small change of the pressure on the primary side can be seen as a big change, whereas the flow of TX changes more slowly.

There were some controversy whether all information should be grouped both in a horizontal and vertical direction. The Fortum designers thought that it would not be necessary that the trends are also vertically grouped, since there is no need to compare them vertically. It is also quite difficult to change the design if all the trends and bars are put into a matrix in which they are both vertically and horizontally aligned. Besides of this, there would be a great deal of work to check that the items are both vertically and horizontally grouped.

There were some controversies whether numerical values should be presented or not in the vicinity of trends and bar graphs. Even though most of them were removed, some of them were considered more important and they were kept there. All numerical values are, however, shown when the measurement value exceeds the alarm limit. It was also considered useful that the reliability of the presented information could be clarified. That is, some kind of observations for the validity of presented information is carried out, and a question mark is shown on the display if the information is considered invalid.

5.2.2.4 The need for training

The Fortum designers and operator designers were convinced that the fluent use of IRD displays needs practice – they are not an every man’s tool. Because of this, operators may at the beginning resist the new displays, but it is probable that by time the resistance would diminish. The interviewees thought that a half-day training session is not long enough, but at least one half-day is needed for training. The participating operators should have an open and unprejudiced attitude towards these displays. Therefore, it would be important that the operator designers that had participated in the design process also could participate in the training session and explain the rationale behind the design choices made.