On the field autonomous automatism: A complementary way for network automation

Under the pressure of regulation authorities, utilities are challenged to improve their SAIDI and SAIFI indicators. Usually, to reach this goal, more intelligence is put inside DMS, increasing in the same time the amount of data to be processed and the importance of the communication in the network. An alternative way, discussed in this paper, consists of using local automatisms, allowing faster reactions and therefore a drastic reduction of the number of customers affected by permanent faults, without requiring heavy communication infrastructure. In addition, this paper introduces a further enhancement allowing a faster power restoration for the remaining affected customers.