Uma proposta de arquitetura multi-agente para operação de sistemas elétricos

Abstract

There is a permanent demand for new computational tools required for power system operation, supervision, analysis and planning. These software’s become larger and increasingly complex due to the system’s characteristics, and when finally finished they are difficult to maintain and to integrate into old application. The main objective of this thesis is to consider a new type of multiagent system’s architecture, capable of to assist the power systems operators in their work of operation, with special approach for the restoration tasks after a fault. The multi-agent system’s architecture was divided in two packages of agents. The first one is composed by "Support Agents", which are responsible for doing services that assist the decision-making process, as: to establish and to coordinate the communication between agents, to update the computational model, interface with the real world, etc. The second package is composed by "Specialized Agents", that have the specific knowledge used in the analysis and solution of the problems found in the application domain. The main benefits obtained with the multi-agent model were: cooperative behavior, competitive processing, distributed topology and open architecture. The cooperative behavior is characterized by dynamic exchange of information between agents making possible segmentation of tasks, besides allowing the reduction of the hierarchic characteristics of the decision process. The competitive processing improves the use of the hardware capacity and decreases the reply time. The architecture’s topology considered is distributed, what makes possible in the abstraction process the system’s division in a lesser number of parts, limited to functional characteristics. The architecture considered is opened, allowing the addition of components and the system’s expansion, as part of a bigger system with the creation of new levels of analysis. As an example of application of the architecture considered it was implemented in real cases like power substations and distribution systems of Brazil’s power utility companies.