Intelligent alarm processing in power systems

Concerns about the effectiveness of conventional alarm processing systems have prompted the development of expert systems designed to present a clearer description of disturbances to the power system operator. The features of the various intelligent alarm processors which are described in the technical literature are discussed in order to highlight the issues which must be addressed and the design decisions which must be made in the development of these systems. A number of systems described in the technical literature under the name intelligent alarm processor are in fact fault diagnosis systems. The authors attempt to clarify the criteria which separate these two types of systems