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

This 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 gas turbine and steam turbine generation facilities, is presented. The modeling phase of the system for successive analysis by simulation using a commercial power system code is also reported. The load-shedding problem is then considered and the related engineering aspects are briefly recalled. 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 expert system is used online to prepare lookup load-shedding tables capable of accounting for actual process conditions. Offline validation of the proposed shedding is then operated by static and/or dynamic simulation. 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 for improving the process continuity and management.