Intelligent system applications in a competitive power industry environment

The emerging competitive power industry environment is creating new engineering and economic problems whose solution may best be achieved with the help of intelligent systems. In this environment of open access to the power transmission systems, the economics and reliability associated with differing power producers needs to be evaluated. An increase in the number of electric energy transactions accompanies the creation of new players in the competitive environment. Evaluation and management of electric energy contracts requires real-time decision support tools. Independent System Operators are emerging as the entity responsible for operation and control of the transmission network. As a result of the need to maximize profits while controlling the costs and maintaining system reliability, new intelligent system applications are needed to meet the new challenges of economics, reliability and power quality. Evaluating transactions requires the automation of intelligent verification of contract feasibility from an economic and reliability point-of-view. To manage the planning process, newly available data needs to be intelligently processed. For example, this data includes measurements needed to support power quality assessment. These intelligent systems can be integrated with information systems that are capable of handling large volumes of data