No Silver Bullet: Artificial Intelligence Is Not a Panacea, but It Works for Fault Analysis and Outage Management

To facilitate repair of the system after faults occur or implement appropriate control action to restore the power system’s normal operation, the occurrence of faults is tracked through a variety of recording equipment, such as digital fault recorders (DFRs), protective relays, circuit breaker monitors, sequence-of-events recorders, fault locators, smart meters, power quality meters, and many other specialized devices; these are often located in substations or mounted on related power apparatus being monitored. A wealth of data is collected in real time, and additional descriptions of causes and impacts are recorded by maintenance crews as they inspect the sites where faults occurred. Such data are analyzed by utility staff to understand causes and impacts and develop mitigation measures. In general, this process takes time, and fault repair and restoration may be prolonged, preventing utility personnel from reducing or avoiding impacts, which, quite often, may be significant. In worst-case scenarios, the impact may be catastrophic, including loss of life.