An online operational expert system with data validation capabilities

The authors discuss the implementation and operation of an expert system in a control center environment. Attention is given to CRAFT (Customer Restoration And Fault Testing), a rule-based expert system which is capable of locating the faulted section of a power transmission line equipped with automatic switches and circuit breakers. In this study, the capabilities of CRAFT are extended by adding two new knowledge bases with rules to determine the status of unsupervised automatic switches and to detect the presence and location of a manual switch with an incorrect status following a fault. An approach involving the appending of a separate expert system computer to the existing SCADA system is developed. Software and hardware interfaces are designed and implemented. The completed implementation is operating online.<
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