Decision making for industrial agents in Smart Grid applications

Agent technology in the power system domain is the realm of theory and laboratory simulation. Agent-based systems, due to their complexity of concept and design, may appear difficult to implement and maintain, and hence more expensive, which is a prohibiting factor against using the new technology. Designing a decision-making system for an agent is one of the most complex tasks in the development of agent-based systems. Designing a decision-making system enabling proactive behaviours while maintaining reasonable complexity is a challenge. This paper proposes an deliberative decision making system for an industrial agent which allows pro-active behaviour of the agent while maintaining reasonable complexity. It employs a combination of practical and procedural reasoning principles. The formal definition of the proposed deliberative layer is derived in the paper. The procedural reasoning is based on IEC 61850 Logical Node concept and implemented with IEC 61499 reference architecture. The proposed agent architecture is demonstrated on the Fault Location Isolation and Supply Restoration application and validated via so-simulation with Matlab model of the sample distribution network.