VERA – the Automated Incident Logger

Energy systems send a constant stream of messages, including status alterations, warnings, errors and acknowledgements. For mixed portfolios containing hundreds of systems from different manufacturers, this means being bombarded by thousands of updates every day. Although most of these do not require a response, amongst the routine items hide the alerts that require immediate action.

VERA – ENERTRAG Powersystem’s automated incident logger (“Vorgangs-Erfassung-Automat” in German) – automatically separates important messages from irrelevant ones. It filters out these routine messages, identifies alerts requiring action and automatically creates incidents in the system, thus enabling personnel to focus on what really matters – fixing faults.

Spot important messages – automatically

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How can you stem the flood of messages in the control room?

A control room overseeing 200 wind turbines will receive several thousand messages every day. Without any automation in place, each individual message will need to be sifted through, assessed and classified:

Is it relevant?
Does it constitute an incident?
How urgent is it?

This manual assessment process takes up valuable work time that cannot then be spent on actually fixing the fault. The larger a portfolio, the higher the outlay required and the higher the risk of a critical alert being missed amidst the onslaught.

How VERA works

Configuring rules

ENERTRAG Powersystem provides a configurable set of rules, enabling your team to determine how VERA is to respond to each type of message: which messages are to trigger an incident automatically? Which messages are to be filtered or singled out? Which messages are to be pooled together or processed with a certain time lag? Different rules can be set up for specific system types, manufacturers and sites.

Filtering messages

VERA analyses every incoming message in real time and compares it against the set of rules that has been configured. Irrelevant items such as routine status reports, repeat acknowledgements and expected output adjustments are filtered out automatically. Although these messages stay logged, they do not take up any human work time.

Creating incidents automatically

If VERA detects a message requiring action, it automatically creates an incident in the system that will contain all the relevant information: system, time, message text, classification and priority. Thus personnel will have all the information at their fingertips when they come to address the incident, without having to enter it themselves.

Flexible and manufacturer-independent

Every control room works in a different way. Some teams only look after wind turbines from a single manufacturer, while others monitor mixed portfolios containing wind turbines, PV systems, battery storage systems and PtX systems from a range of manufacturers –and VERA is capable of reflecting these differences. The set of rules can be configured as desired:

By system type: different filtering rules for wind turbines, PV systems, battery storage systems and PtX systems.
By manufacturer: every manufacturer uses their own messages codes and error descriptions, and VERA assigns these manufacturer-specific notifications to the right types of incident.
By priority: personnel decide which messages will immediately trigger a high-priority incident and which will be pooled together and displayed in an overview.

VERA filters irrelevant messages out and creates incidents automatically, allowing personnel to focus on the essentials.

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The benefits of VERA

Significant cost savings: creating incidents automatically removes the need for manual assessments and reduces staff workload in the control room.
Focus on the essentials: personnel only see the messages that actually require action.
Scalability: VERA grows as your portfolio grows. Whether you have 50 systems or 500, the level of automation remains the same.
Configurability: rules can be customized for specific system types, manufacturers, priority levels and times of day.
No ties to specific manufacturers: VERA processes messages from all system types and manufacturers connected to ENERTRAG Powersystem.
Seamless integration: VERA is embedded in ENERTRAG Powersystem’s operational monitoring and incident management, so no separate software is required.