A Next Generation Alarm Processing Algorithm Incorporating Recommendations and Decisions on Wide Area Control

The number of alarms for a typical power system event may be overwhelming to power system operators and may delay the operator from taking appropriate corrective action. Worldwide, a number of alarm processing techniques are used to reduce the number of alarms that the operator ´sees´, so as to better comprehend the situation at hand and make accurate decisions faster. This paper proposes an alarm processing algorithm that goes beyond the prioritization of alarms. The conceptual algorithm proposed has additional features that offer the operator recommendations and decisions for the event that has caused the alarms, as well as a feature that may execute controls if the event is non critical. In this sense, the proposal is a bridge from wide area measurement to wide area control systems.