Minimization of power systems downtime after perturbations

This paper reports on the importance of automation of power systems in reducing power downtime after faults. Traditionally power utilities used fault calls from customers to detect power outages. Following this maintenance team would be dispatched to the scene, to first identify the location of fault and then isolate the fault area through switching activities, effect repairs and then restore power. These procedures are cumbersome and time consuming, resulting in appreciable periods of power down time with the attendant economic loss to the power industry. Nowadays, power utilities use intelligent electronic devices for protection and control of power systems. This provides easy means of location and identification of faults. But, it has equally thrown up challenges. Research is now focused on tackling the operating constraints, load balancing and arising practical problems. This paper proffers solutions to power systems protection and restoration after faults using, deterministic algorithm method, black starting distributed generation method, wind turbine generation (WTG) method, artificial neural network (ANN) method and stochastic search method for restoration of power. It is found that automation of power systems using the above methods significantly enhanced the protection and restoration of power systems after a perturbation.