New approach to alarm processing in power systems based on the set covering theory and a refined genetic algorithm

In this paper, a new approach to alarm processing in power systems is proposed based on the set covering theory and a refined genetic algorithm (RGA). Although alarm processing and fault diagnosis have different explanations in power system community, from the viewpoint of artificial intelligence community, the alarm processing problem is a typical Multiple Fault Diagnosis (MFD) problem. Thus, we first attribute the alarm processing problem to a MFD problem, and discuss the MFD problem in general with special emphasis on the evaluation criteria. And then, a probabilistic criterion is introduced to describe the alarm processing problem, and this criterion is more reasonable than the currently used criteria. Thirdly, a new method is presented to solve the alarm processing problem using a RAG. Finally, two sample examples are used to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the developed method. Test results suggest that the developed RAG-based probabilistic method to the alarm processing problem is promising.