Power system monitoring using Petri net embeddings

Abstract

A failure in a power transmission line causes a number of circuit breakers to activate in an effort to isolate the failure and prevent it from corrupting the rest of the power system. Based on information from these physically distributed protective devices, a central controller needs to quickly locate and identify the failure. The task becomes challenging due to the complexity of modern power transmission networks and due to the possibility of sensor failures or incorrect operation of protective devices. A solution to this problem is investigated using Petri net models. Our approach allows concurrent/incremental processing of the information that arrives at the controller and only requires simple calculations (linear checks) during execution time. Most reasoning is implicitly performed at design time, which gives our method an important edge for real-time monitoring. These same techniques can potentially handle multiple failures or perform hierarchical and/or distributed monitoring.