Alarms
warning
inaccurate data results
| ● | Do not incorrectly configure the software or the devices. |
| ● | Do not base your maintenance or service actions solely on messages and information displayed by the software. |
| ● | Do not rely solely on software messages and reports to determine if the system is functioning correctly or meeting all applicable standards and requirements. |
| ● | Consider the implications of unanticipated transmission delays or failures of communications links. |
Failure to follow these instructions can result in death, serious injury, equipment damage, or permanent loss of data.
warning
unintended equipment operation
| ● | Do not use the software to control time-critical functions. |
| ● | Do not use the software to control remote equipment without proper access control and status feedback. |
Failure to follow these instructions can result in death, serious injury, or equipment damage.
Overview
The alarm viewer is the user interface (UI) for the Alarms application. Use the alarm viewer to see software generated and device-based alarms in PME.
The alarm viewer UI has two main areas, the view library and the alarms display. To see alarm information in the alarms display, you select a view in the view library. The library has predefined system views and you can create additional custom views. For more information, see: Alarm Viewer UI
TIP: You can open the alarm viewer from the ALARMS link in the Web Applications banner.
View types
There are two types of views, status views and history views.
Status views
Use status views to see existing alarm definitions in the system, their present state, how often they occurred, their priority, and other relevant information. The following predefined status views are available in
| View Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Active Alarms | This view shows alarms that are in the active state. It includes low, medium and high priority alarms from all sources and all categories. This view does not include General Event and Unassociated Dropout type alarms. |
| All Alarms | This view shows all low, medium and high priority alarms in the system regardless of state, category, and source. |
| Unacknowledged Alarms | This view shows unacknowledged alarms. It includes low, medium and high priority alarms from all sources and all categories that are in the active or inactive state. |
History views
Use history views to see a record of Incidents, alarm instances, and events that happened in the past. The following predefined history views are available in
| View Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Asset Monitoring Incidents | This view shows Incidents that are categorized as Asset Monitoring and are in the active or unacknowledged state. It includes low, medium and high priority Incidents from all sources. |
| Clutter | This view shows Incidents that are categorized as General Clutter and are in the active or unacknowledged state. It includes low, medium and high priority Incidents from all sources. |
| Load Loss Incidents | This view shows incidents that are categorized as Power Quality (Over Voltage, Swell, Under Voltage, Interruption, Sag, Transient, or Unclassified Disturbance) and that recorded a sustained load loss after a voltage sag. It includes low, medium and high priority Incidents that are active or unacknowledged, from all sources. |
| Power Quality Incidents | This view shows Incidents that are categorized as Power Quality and are in the active or unacknowledged state. It includes low, medium and high priority Incidents from all sources. |
| Recent Alarms | This view shows alarm instances that are in the active or unacknowledged state. It includes low, medium and high priority alarms from all sources and all categories. This view does not include Unassociated Dropout and Clock/Time type alarms. |
| Recent Events | This view shows events of all priorities from all sources. |
| Recent Incidents | This view shows Incidents that are in the active or unacknowledged state. It includes low, medium and high priority Incidents from all sources and all categories. This view does not include General Alarms for type Clutter. |
| System Health | This view shows Diagnostics type alarm instances that are in the active or unacknowledged state. It includes low, medium and high priority alarms from all sources. This view does not include Diagnostics Alarms of type Clock/Time and Device Settings. |
Incidents, Alarms, and Events
Incidents
Incidents provide a high-level view. They represent real world power events, such as disturbances or faults. An incident combines alarms, waveforms, and burst data from many sources in the system into a single representation of the power event. You can look at an incident and see how the different pieces of information are linked together, instead of having to analyze each data point individually. Use incidents as a starting point for your alarm analysis.
For more information, see:
Alarms
Alarms provide information on the state and history of alarm conditions that are defined for specific sources and measurements in the system. Use alarms to monitor the state of your power system and to investigate specific details as part of an Incident analysis.
For more information, see:
Events
Events are records of activities in the system. Activities are performed by users, the system software, or the connected devices. Events are logged and displayed as they happen in the system without any processing or aggregation.
For more information, see:
Alarm Acknowledgment
You can acknowledge alarms in status views and history views. If you acknowledge alarms through an incident history view, all alarms that are part of this incident will be acknowledged. Whenever you acknowledge an alarm, from any of these locations, you are acknowledging the alarm definition itself, not an instance of it. That means acknowledging an alarm marks it as Acknowledged and resets its Unacknowledged occurrence counter. For more information, see Acknowledging alarms.
Analysis tools
The alarm viewer includes tools for analyzing the causes and impacts of alarm events. Some of these tools are for very specific alarm types, others can be used for a broad range of alarms.
For details on the different tools, see:
Disturbance Direction
Load Impact
Timeline analysis
Voltage Tolerance
Waveforms
Time display
See Time Display in Web Applications for information on how time is displayed in a system where the monitoring devices, the PME/Web server, and the Web client (browser) are in different time zones.
Terminology
See Alarms terminology for definitions of the terms used in the Alarms application.
For information on how to configure Alarms, see Alarms configuration.