MARS: an aid for network restoration after a local disturbance

Power transmission networks are protected from local failures by automatic devices that disconnect faulted areas after a failure to suppress short circuits or overloads on lines. To construct power restoration plans, operators must take into account general restoration guidelines or local constraints, but most of the procedure relies on their experience. The aim of the MARS project is to provide the operator with an aid during these delicate phases of network monitoring. MARS is a second-generation expert system which takes into account the man-machine cooperation problematic. MARS constructs restoration plans after a local failure on a power transmission network. Organized around a blackboard architecture, it integrates planning knowledge sources containing the restoration expertise, a qualitative model to predict the results of the considered actions, and a quantitative model to verify the correctness of the plans towards numerical constraints (load flow).<>