IGI Shifts Technology Paradigm for ITC Holdings' Control Room

July, 2008 - While the focus of the public’s attention recently has been riveted on the ever changing price of oil-based energy, ITC Holdings Corporation of Novi, Michigan, is quietly working 24 / 7 to deliver another form of energy to millions of customers. And IGI of Commerce, Michigan, a designer of custom, large scale computer display solutions is playing a key role in helping ITC distribute reliable and affordable electric power throughout several Midwestern states.

In 2006, ITC began planning for its new Novi corporate headquarters, into which it would eventually consolidate all its personnel and operations in early 2008. The company had a blank slate to design and install a new control room where its critical energy distribution functions are monitored. For this complex assignment, ITC called on IGI to design and build a new state-of-the-art control room.

ITC’s control room needs had recently expanded due to its acquisition of METC (Michigan Electric Transmission Company), which immediately added a large portion of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula and six million customers to ITC’s distribution grid. In order to adequately monitor this larger grid and also accommodate its future expansion plans, IGI set about designing a control room that is perhaps the most advanced in the industry, meeting both ITC’s current and future needs.

Pat Hernandez, President of IGI, says, “As an independent design and integration company, we had free reign to determine the best technology for this facility. This was a big advantage in our design approach to ITC’s new control room.”

The solution proposed by IGI and accepted by ITC represents a paradigm shift in the design approach of large control rooms. Utilizing ultra high resolution (4096 x 2160) Sony SXRD projectors and new graphics processing technology from NVIDIA, IGI was able to dramatically reduce the number of required projectors from well over 100 display cubes typically required for facilities of this size to only 14 Sony SXRDs to cover the entire 140’ x 20’ screen.