Fault diagnosis of power distribution systems using a multi-agent approach

The distribution system of a public electricity supply company is monitored, controlled and managed from one or more control centres. The distribution system consists of networks from 132 kV down to the 240/415 V supplied to customers´ premises. At times of extreme weather conditions, when major disturbances such as storms, blizzards and lightning occur, many faults can be generated simultaneously, and the control engineers can be rapidly inundated with a large number of telemetry messages, damage reports and customers´ telephone calls reporting loss of supply. The task of fault diagnosis on the distribution networks operating at 11 kV and lower voltages is very different from the higher voltage levels because very little telemetered data is available and knowledge of a fault occurrence often depends on customers complaining of loss of supply. Unfortunately, the connectivity of customers to the network is not normally available on geographic information systems (GIS). A multi-agent system for fault diagnosis of electricity distribution networks has been developed as an aid to control engineers (CE).