An expert-system-assisted reliability analysis of electric power networks

Abstract This paper presents an implementation of expert systems in the reliability analysis of electric power networks. The reliability model uses the method of Markovian minimal cut sets, which allows the consideration of several stochastic dependencies concerning the state space, such as common-mode failures, limited repair capacities and outage postponabilities, and the simultaneous performance of maintenance and repair by the same team. On the other hand, approaching the reliability problem from the view point of expert systems opens a wide range of possibilities for very complex treatment of reliability problems. This means not only the calculation of reliability indices, but fault-tree construction, performance of sensitivity analysis and finding the appropriate modifying actions.