安装大量新型传感器和通信设备，并修建用于储存和管理这些设备收集的数据的计算基础设施，是建立输电系统'智能电网'的第一步。对设备进行大量投资之后，当前的关注点是开发大规模数据集的分析和可视化方法。大量新数据的最直接的应用是数据可视化。本文介绍了过去数年内电力行业针对数据可视化所开展的一些可视化技术的调研。这些技术包括饼图技术、动画技术、等高线技术、时变图技术、基于地理的显示技术、图像融合技术和数据聚合技术。本文还着重介绍了'迷你图'新概念，用这种相当于文字大小的图形显示大量时变数 据是一种极为有效的方法。

The installation of vast quantities of additional new sensing and communication equipment, in conjunction with building the computing infrastructure to store and manage data gathered by this equipment, has been the first step in the creation of what is generically referred to as the 'smart grid' for the electric transmission system. With this enormous capital investment in equipment having been made, attention is now focused on developing methods to analyze and visualize this large data set. The most direct use of this large set of new data will be in data visualization. This paper presents a survey of some visualization techniques that have been deployed by the electric power industry for visualizing data over the past several years. These techniques include pie charts, animation, contouring, time-varying graphs, geographic-based displays, image blending, and data aggregation techniques. The paper then emphasizes a newer concept of using word-sized graphics called sparklines as an extremely effective method of showing large amounts of time-varying data.