Operation and management of the electric system for industrial plants: an expert system prototype for load-shedding operator assistance

The present paper presents the analysis carried out for designing and developing a prototype expert system capable of managing the electrical system of an industrial plant. The electric network of the plant, including significant generation facilities of the gas turbine and steam turbine type, is presented. The modeling phase of the system for successive analysis by simulation using a commercial power system code is also reported. After a short recall of the engineering aspects of the load-shedding problem, the guidelines for the realization of a load-shedding scheme for industrial electrical plants based also on advanced artificial intelligence tools such as expert systems are proposed. The use of a prototype rule-based expert system is expected to permit the achievement of a better flexibility in the realization of load-shedding schemes capable of improving the process continuity and management.