Power system restoration methodologies and implementation strategies [Book Review]

Power System blackouts are rare events. However, when they occur, the effects on industry, commerce, and everyday life of the general population can be quite severe. In the aftermath of a blackout, a subject of critical importance is the rapidity with which electric service is restored. Service restoration is an immensely complex subject, and often restoration strategies have to be modified or even reformulated as the system events unfold. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in power system restoration practices used by the industry. In response to this perceived need and a growing interest among power system engineers, the IEEE Power Engineering Society published a collection of 14 papers in a volume entitled Power System Restoration in 1993. This book was soon sold out and is now out of print. In 2000, the IEEE Power Engineering Society published a much enlarged book entitled Power System Restoration: Methodologies and Implementation. This book contains reprints of 87 papers on restoration practices and includes the 14 papers in the original 1993 collection. M.M. Adibi, who chaired the working group responsible for a substantial segment of this volume, is the editor of this publication. The book includes an excellent index. The book is divided in seven parts. Each part conveniently groups papers that discuss a specific aspect of power system restoration. As an introduction to each part, a member of a panel of experts (M.M. Adibi, Jerry Ancona, Lester Fink, R.J. Kafka, Chen-Ching Liu, A.J. Monticelli, and M. Rafian) presents an overview of the subject and a brief discussion of each paper. These introductions and editorial comments constitute a very useful feature of the book. The organization of the book is logical and progresses from the basic issues of power system restoration to the new state-of-the-art techniques. The first part discusses main concepts in power system restoration and a commentary on some of the major power system disturbances of the past. This part provides a background and an introduction to the key issues in power system restoration. It also emphasizes the need for striking a careful balance between different objectives, constraints, and operating strategies that will ensure successful restoration of service to customers. The second part of the book presents papers that discuss some of the different restoration techniques used. This part also provides guidelines and recommendations for the development of efficient restoration plans. The issues covered vary from reactive power control and sustained and transient overvoltage controls to protective system coordination. The third part of the book discusses restoration planning. It covers estimation of duration of restoration and restoration strategies during predisturbance and post-disturbance conditions. The majority of the papers in this part deal with the 1977 blackout that occurred in northeastern United States. These papers point out the need to develop new power system restoration techniques that ensure faster and more reliable restoration plans. The next part of the book presents a very important issue. The discussion is on restoration training. It emphasizes the need for training personnel in the restoration process. The fact that major blackouts are not frequent often provides a false sense of security. Not B O O K R E V I E W