An intelligent front end for secondary power distribution system design

A description is presented of the development and use of an expert system (ES)-based intelligent front-end (IFE) for radial-type, electric power secondary distribution system (single-phase three-phase, overhead/underground) design. The design is based on minimizing the total annual cost (TAC) of owning and operating the system, subject to specified voltage drop and dip criteria. A rule-based, goal-driven, backward chaining ES shell, VP-Expert, is used to create the IFE and interface it with relational database files on transformer data and transmission line data. The database files act as the fact base of the expert system. The rule base, which uses English-like `IF. . .THEN. . .´ structure, contains all of the rules for the secondary distribution system design, and has the ability to solve conflicting problems