FirstEnergy Corp is looking for a few people with the emotional and mental disposition of air traffic controllers -- people who can work as transmission system operators in the company's new $45 million, state-of-the art transmission control center next year.
Artist rendering of FirstEnergy Crop.'s planned, state-of-the-art transmission control center in Akron.
AKRON, Ohio -- FirstEnergy Corp. is building a $45 million transmission control center in Akron that will enable the company to control power plants and high-voltage power flows in three states.
The state-of-the-art facility, planned for completion by the end of 2013, will consolidate older, smaller control centers located in Wadsworth and Reading, Pa., and require the hiring of additional specialized staff.
From the company's West Akron campus, the new center's transmission control operators will be able to digitally and visually keep track of conditions across tens of thousands of miles of high-voltage lines -- and take action to keep power flowing when things go wrong.
Thousands of sensors on lines and substations already send data automatically to the company's existing control centers.
Operators in the new facility will have computers and programs giving them the ability to know more about the system, know it more quickly, and take action faster.
They will be able to see a map of the system on huge wall-sized screens. Additionally, they will be able to drill down into any specific area on desktop screens for a closer look at potential problems -- and figure out how to work around them before they blossom into real trouble
Among the nearly incredible electronic devices in the new center will be a special computer and software program called a "state estimator."
An estimator is part of a control center's emergency management system. Existing control centers have them.
The new center's emergency management system will probably be faster, said Carl Bridenbaugh, vice president of the company's transmission division.
The estimator will be able analyze the mountains of real-time data pouring into the center every second about the condition of the grid.
Then, every couple of minutes it will generate emergency contingency actions that controllers should consider for power plant and grid failures that might -- but have not yet -- happened.
If that sounds a bit like the job an air traffic controller faces, you are correct, said Bridenbaugh.
"Except that transmission system operators are not just monitoring the current traffic," he said. "They are monitoring the contingencies, what might happen."
"They are the people sitting at the desks 24 hours a day, watching the visualizations, running the analyses to make certain the system is operating."
The new emergency management system will probably include visualization of a potential problem, said Bridenbaugh, a feature that could perhaps make the job a little less stressful.
It's a tough job, and the company is looking to hire more operators, said spokesman Mark Durbin.
He said about 20 of the 112 employees currently working at its Wadsworth center are new hires. The new people must undergo extensive training.
And the new center will require the hiring of about another dozen, he said.
Applicants will need an associate degree in an area such as electronic engineering. And the company will probably require that they have experience dispatching power in the lower voltage distribution systems that move electricity from the grid to homes and businesses.