The use of intelligent systems techniques in condition monitoring of electrical plant

Engineers who make critical operational and strategic plant management decisions require high quality information. Intelligent systems provide engineers with information by applying knowledge of plant behaviour to plant data. Therefore, intelligent systems significantly extend and add value to the capabilities provided by existing condition monitoring systems while supporting enhanced plant management strategies. A range of intelligent systems techniques have been described which have been successfully applied to a range of condition monitoring problems. Experience in the use of these techniques has highlighted a range of strengths and weaknesses in ease of construction, scope and functionality, and computational performance. In particular, the domain coverage provided by each technique was limited by the availability of useful knowledge, models, cases and data. Therefore, an integrated approach to the application of intelligent systems in condition monitoring has been proposed which uses intelligent systems methods providing flexible and robust provision of plant management information for entire engineering processes and systems.