The use of artificial intelligence based systems for the summarisation and diagnosis of events on electrical power networks

This paper describes the development and operation of two mature "expert systems" which both have the common objective of providing decision support for electrical power system operations staff. Both systems operate on telemetry data, typically obtained from the utility's SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system in order to provide useful information in the form of event summaries and diagnostics. The motivation for the development of these systems includes the fact that the amount of data which operators must digest can be extremely voluminous, particularly during occasions when the electrical network is experiencing a large number of faults, for example during storm conditions. Additionally, the operators are under pressure to produce diagnoses of network events as quickly as possible so that the primary system may be re-configured and supply restored to consumers.