An agent concept for managing electrical distribution networks

A new agent concept for managing technically advanced electrical distribution networks is presented. The essence of the concept consists of three aspects: the secondary substation object, decentralized functionality and an information access model. In this framework, a primary substation area is modeled so that secondary substations are represented as copies of the secondary substation object, local function copies in every substation represent functions and they are executed by a token passing procedure that occurs between neighboring secondary substations. The permission to execute a function is delegated to different power system hierarchy levels according to the information access model. The concept is illustrated by the use of case studies of condition assessment and fault management. In addition, a small-scale implementation is described and results of some test runs are presented.