Intelligent tutoring systems for power system control centers

Power systems are presently remotely operated and controlled from control centers that receive online information about the power system state. Control center operators have very high-demanding tasks that makes their training a key issue for the performance of the whole power system. Simulators are usually used by electrical utilities for this purpose, but they are very expensive applications as they have to model the control center as well as the power system. On the other hand, their use requires the preparation of the training sessions by a qualified training staff, which is a very time consuming task. Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) provide some new possibilities for training control center operators without much assistance of the teaching staff. Also, the expert system used in the control center can easily be adapted to an ITS. This paper presents the training module of SPARSE, the expert system for fault analysis and power restoration assistance in the Portuguese transmission network