Alternatives to Contour Visualizations for Power Systems Data

TL;DR

This paper evaluates four alternative visualization methods for electrical grid voltage data, finding that Voronoi tessellations and network-weighted contour maps provide more accurate data representation than traditional contour maps.

Contribution

It introduces and compares four novel visualization techniques for power system data, highlighting more effective alternatives to standard contour maps.

Findings

Voronoi tessellations outperform regular contour maps in data accuracy.

Network-weighted contour maps better represent voltage distribution.

Alternative methods improve visual analysis of electrical grid data.

Abstract

Electrical grids are geographical and topological structures whose voltage states are challenging to represent accurately and efficiently for visual analysis. The current common practice is to use colored contour maps, yet these can misrepresent the data. We examine the suitability of four alternative visualization methods for depicting voltage data in a geographically dense distribution system -- Voronoi polygons, H3 tessellations, S2 tessellations, and a network-weighted contour map. We find that Voronoi tessellations and network-weighted contour maps more accurately represent the statistical distribution of the data than regular contour maps.