Primate Technologies, Inc. has a solution to notify personnel based upon a determination of the system, component, application, location, or other parameters about a problem or potential problem. The product that P-Tech uses for notifications is GridGuardian.

GridGuardian issues alerts via notification methods based on each individual’s preference on the method they prefer to receive notifications. Notifications to staff may be received by email messages; text messages to pagers and cell phones; voice messages to land based lines, voice over IP phones, or cell phones; or announce messages or play sounds over the server’s sound card or over a loud speaker. And, GridGuardian may notify an application or another system, instead or in addition to an individual, by launching an application or executing JavaScript. It is a power notification solution.

Individualized notifications are used because some people more reliably respond to voice mail on a home phone during off hours while others more reliably respond to a text message on a cell phone or a pager. GridGuardian tailors each persons preferred method(s) of notification so that the most reliable communication path(s) are used to share information and provide these notifications. And, groups may be established so that an entire group is notified if appropriate.

Coupled with the Intelligent Alarming capabilities of GridGuardian, an abnormality that persists can escalate in severity by GridGuardian. Then additional staff may be automatically notified of the persistent issue. With this capability, GridGuardian may automatically initiate more serious responses to assist control room operators. For example, in electric utilities, notifications could be established to notify operators of an increasing number of over-voltage lines and after a threshold of time or number of lines matching over-voltage conditions, additional operators or supervisors could be notified of pending problems that would affect system stability and reliability.

Because different systems require different personnel expertise to resolve problems, GridGuardian can notify the technical personnel associated with each system. First responders could attempt to resolve a problem and then GridGuardian could automatically notify technical experts for issues that first responders are unable to resolve promptly.

GridGuardian provides crisp, clear voice messages using AT&T’s Natural Voices text-to-speech engine. These voice messages are not “canned” messages, but are generated based upon information forwarded from the original system. AT&T’s Natural Voices is the same text to speech system telephone companies use for directory assistance, so the quality is superb.