Improving restoration strategies in the Italian national grid

The Italian blackout occurred on September 28^th, 2003 started a deep critical revision of defence and restoration plans developed for the Italian national grid, and originated several tasks with the aim to improve the effectiveness of these plans. This paper deals with system restoration, and discusses some of the aspects concerning improvements of the Italian restoration plan. Touches of the topics in this paper are based on at development of innovative restoration paths, loaded through pumping storage plants instead of the usual distribution system loads. Details on the field test of the first new path are also reported.