Considerations on Self-Healing and Assisted-Healing for power transmission systems in operation centers

One of the most challenging proposals about the smart grid concept is the deployment of features that enable a power grid to reconfigure itself, isolating defects and recovering through alternative available routes after disturbances. This ability is known as Self-Healing, a concept most widespread in distribution power systems. In transmission power systems, however, there is a substantially lower amount of research. Some authors says the actual transmission is inherently self-healing since its topology is meshed designed, which ensures redundancy for equipment trips, preventing a load outage. Nevertheless, automatic transmission systems reconfiguration presents high improvement potential in the restoring process, in terms of security and agility. Under this scenario, this paper sets the framework for a self-healing system to perform in the transmission system. In this framework, are considered the main technical requirements, concerns, points of attention and inherent issues of transmission operation process. The Assisted-Healing concept will also be considered for such circumstances in which the Self-Healing is not convenient or not possible to be fully performed. The main aim is support operators to deal better with stressful decisions related to the restoration process after power systems disturbances, reducing assets and load outages periods.