1. A method of parsing a natural language phrase to retrieve data associated with a power monitoring system, comprising: receiving a natural language phrase including one or more terms composed of alphanumeric characters, the terms including at least one term that indicates a data manipulation action for manipulating data of the power monitoring system, the data having a data type; parsing the phrase to extract the one or more terms; mapping each of the one or more terms to one or more category items, wherein the category items include a data quantity category indicating a quantity of data representing one or more electrical characteristics measured by a monitoring point in the power monitoring system, a data source category indicating a source of the data measured by the monitoring point, and a selection criteria category indicating the data manipulation action to be performed on the data measured by the monitoring point; constructing a structured query based on the one or more category items; responsive to receiving the structured query, retrieving the data from the data source mapped to the data source category and manipulating the data according to the data manipulation action mapped to the selection criteria category to produce manipulated data; formatting at least the manipulated data for presentation on a video display to produce formatted manipulated data; and displaying the formatted manipulated data on the video display.
1. A method of parsing a natural language phrase to retrieve data associated with a power monitoring system, comprising: receiving a natural language phrase including one or more terms composed of alphanumeric characters, the terms including at least one term that indicates a data manipulation action for manipulating data of the power monitoring system, the data having a data type; parsing the phrase to extract the one or more terms; mapping each of the one or more terms to one or more category items, wherein the category items include a data quantity category indicating a quantity of data representing one or more electrical characteristics measured by a monitoring point in the power monitoring system, a data source category indicating a source of the data measured by the monitoring point, and a selection criteria category indicating the data manipulation action to be performed on the data measured by the monitoring point; constructing a structured query based on the one or more category items; responsive to receiving the structured query, retrieving the data from the data source mapped to the data source category and manipulating the data according to the data manipulation action mapped to the selection criteria category to produce manipulated data; formatting at least the manipulated data for presentation on a video display to produce formatted manipulated data; and displaying the formatted manipulated data on the video display. 4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the manipulating the data according to the data manipulation action includes organizing the data into a set of data over a time range.