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The Tri-County Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) was founded, like many other Rural Electrification cooperatives, in 1940. The cooperative served rural North Carolina farms and homes with 304 miles of line. Today, Tri-County serves over 20,400 consumers with more than 2391 miles of electric lines and is based in Dudley. This April, RGB Spectrum technical partner, Integrated Visual Solutions designed and installed EMC's new Call Center. This, first of its kind, facility primarily serves as the overnight call center and system-wide operations monitoring facility.

The new call/command center location was created to allow customer service phone representatives to monitor critical systems that show power usage, outages and other problems throughout the EMC coverage area. A QuadView HDx multiviewer allows EMC's representatives to quickly and easily respond to customer calls and concerns while monitoring a multitude of information sources in real time (which is the real mission of the EMC). The facility also serves as a command center for the EMC during times of emergency and natural disaster as widespread power outages impact large numbers of people. Prior to the new Call Canter, EMC had no centralized location for managing calls and monitoring the electrical grid. During the planning of the new center a number of options were considered for gathering and displaying vital information. In the end, a system built around the RGB QVHDx and a single high resolution projector proved to be the best choice. An RGB BP-16 button control panel facilitates the change of views as situations dictate.

Ease of use was a primary design criterion for call center personnel. Simplicity reduces training time and staff supervision which lead to a more efficient and responsive operation. In times of emergency response uncomplicated operation reduces confusion and supports appropriate decision making. The system enables the simultaneous display of computer generated maps and proprietary applications for monitoring power usage/outages, a network of cameras plus broadcast news and weather feeds.

Tony Grantham, Manager of Engineering for EMC states, "The RGB multi-view system allowed us to create an AV solution in which multiple sources can be viewed in scalable windows using a single projector. Our users--without help from the IT staff-- can easily change the sources or presets using the simple BP-16. Our staff was able to create their own presets even before the completion of the initial training session. The objective of making a true call center/command room was achieved using the QVHDx/projector solution at a lower overall cost than a typical LCD video wall setup. That being said, the most important aspect is that we know the system will function whenever the need arises."