An evolutionary approach to applications software for distribution power system control centers

A status report is presented on a project aimed at implementing new technologies, such as concurrent processing, object-oriented programming, and artificial intelligence techniques, in distribution system control centers. The applications functions include monitoring, diagnosing, switching, and service restoration. A major concern in implementing such technologies is how best to interface existing software (number crunching) with the new tools. The project investigates the possibility of solving the integration problem by using conventional language extensions for coding the new applications. All the required extensions are based on a distributed real-time system which supports process-spawning and message-passing. This project forms part of a more general effort which includes applications to a broader class of power system problems and to such areas as the real-time control of telephony switching systems.<>