Knowledge-based system for distribution system outage locating using comprehensive information

This paper presents a knowledge-based system (KBS) designed to locate distribution system outages using comprehensive data from customer trouble calls, a wireless automated meter reading (AMR) system, and distribution supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). The algorithm uses the on-demand read capability of a wireless AMR system, which allows the utility to communicate directly with the meter controllers. The algorithm of the developed KBS has two major parts: an outage escalation procedure and meter-polling procedure. The escalation procedure involves searching for the outage region according to the comprehensive outage information. The meter-polling procedure includes designing the meter-polling schema and confirming the outage locations based on the meter polling results. The algorithm was designed to handle both single outage and multiple outage situations. The expert system shell G2 was used as the development tool.