Better KBS for real-time applications in power system control centers: the experience of SPARSE project

Modern Power System Control Centers must operate and control medium and large electrical networks that usually cover a large geographic area. The accomplishment of these tasks has been made possible due to important developments in computer and communication technologies. Nowadays, complex Power Systems require a very accurate and efficient control that makes Control Centers especially important. These centers are equipped with SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems allowing to acquire information about the Power System and its transmission to Control Centers in real-time. Due to the symbolic nature of the reasoning involved in some control tasks, Artificial Intelligence techniques appeared as a promising solution. Some years ago, some of the most important electrical utilities around the world began to develop knowledge-based applications to incorporate in their Control Centers. These applications deal with the information available in the Control Center and help operators in decision making. On the other hand, the duration of this kind of project is still rather long and the total number of deployed systems all over the world is still very low. This paper deals with what we consider the most important points for the success of Artificial Intelligence applications in Control Centers. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.