A Large System Approach Toward Operating the Electric Power System by Decision and Control

Techniques for the computer aided operation and control of the large interconnected power system in its Normal, Alert, Emergency and Restoration conditions were in the process of development at Washington University under consecutive sponsorship by NSF-RANN, ERDA and DOE for the last 15 years. At this point at least a broad based consistent foundation for the computer aided operation and control of the large power system is accomplished. Since this body of results is now scattered in some 45 separate publications it seems timely to discuss the overall accomplishments in a summary fashion as is done in this paper. These results differ from the state of art of the control centers on the power system in being more consistent and much more complete (e.g. computer aided emergency control or restoration as defined here are not state of art) more up to date in parts (e.g. automatic generation control has 1950's servo-mechanism implementation in the state of art) and most of all by being a mathematically and computationally sound large system approach taylored to the operating needs and basic structure of the system itself, not to the imposition of existing solution or computation techniques.