A cooperative expert system for transmission expansion planning of electrical power systems

This paper describes a cooperative expert system for managing the transmission expansion planning process, taking into account the selection of feasible transmission routes, as well as the definition of the expansion plan itself. The use of an expert system is proposed to create a planning environment, which can not only emulate the human expert reasoning, but also represent appropriately all heuristic knowledge related to this problem. The main point of this system is the fact that it is able to define feasible alternatives for the expansion of the electrical transmission system. Afterwards, the expert system executes a network flows program, which determines the minimum cost expansion plan. The developed prototype is tested with a realistic system of 500 busbars.