Intelligent network operation and control systems [power system automation]

In many industrial applications a great deal of time, effort and resources have been spent in producing stand alone systems to solve specific problems which are in reality often just subproblems of a much larger problem. More benefit could be obtained from this expenditure if these systems could work together in order to more closely meet the overall needs of the application. In order to do this methodically, two things are required: a framework which provides assistance for the cooperation and communication required between the individual systems and a methodology to help to design and structure the overall system. The Esprit Project, Archon (P2256), provides both a software architecture and a methodology to create such systems following a distributed paradigm. This paper describes the CIDIM (cooperating intelligent systems for distribution management systems) application which has been developed as a prototype expert system in order to demonstrate the usefulness of the Archon approach in the power system control room