An Expert System as a Dispatchers' Aid for the Isolation of Line Section Faults

Between power circuit breakers at the two ends of a transmission line, automatic switches have been installed in utility systems to sectionalize the line in case of a fault. Often the operation of automatic switches is not able to isolate the faulted section exactly. In this situation, system dispatchers need to apply reasoning and some heuristics to determine a set of actions which will isolate the faulted section precisely. An expert system to aid decision-making in an operating center environment is developed in this study. The required knowledge has been obtained from discussions with dispatchers. Main issues in the expert system development, such as rule base organization, implementation in control center, interface with a database, and computational efficiency, are discussed.