Development of a power protection system using an agent based architecture

This paper presents an approach to the development of a system for the design, analysis and assessment of power protection schemes. The system aims to assist the protection experts in automating their work and aids them in diagnosing, planning and remembering. The system could also be used as a teaching or a training tool for the inexperienced fresh graduates in the field. Protection for a power system can be viewed as a sum of coordinated protective devices located in the various parts of a power system. The design of protection schemes depends on the configuration of the system, the specifications the system must meet and the constraints that must be satisfied. Selecting and setting the appropriate relays and protective devices are no easy tasks and require skill, experience, heuristics and common sense knowledge. This paper presents a generic architecture based on multi agent paradigm and introduces a novel approach in the development of an intelligent system. It uses a distributed problem solving technique and integrates different reasoning methodologies such as case based, rule based and explanation based. The architecture of the system is based on an object oriented paradigm and utilises a multi knowledge representation scheme in a case based framework. Part of the system which has been implemented in an object oriented environment shows a promising and convincing demonstration of the system's architecture and approach.