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Engineers Will Demonstrate New 	System To Prevent Power Failures, Purdue
News/Science Daily
 









Abstract: A team of engineers led by a Purdue
University researcher will demonstrate a new system in April that
aims to avert power failures by automatically adapting to the
daily fluctuations in electricity consumption.

The system might be especially helpful in easing problems
associated with electricity shortages and utility deregulation. It
would precisely predict and monitor electricity consumption for
each customer from one hour to the next, also making it possible
to charge higher rates for those placing the greatest strain on
the power grid during times of peak demand.(…)

"When there is a shortage of electricity and one customer
wants to heat up his Jacuzzi, he should be paying more," Tsoukalas
said. "An essential element of our approach is to modify the
behavior of customers for the well-being of the entire
system."

Work on the new system, called TELOS, for Transmission
Entities with Learning Capabilities and On-Line Self-Healing, is
headed by Tsoukalas. He is one of 23 researchers in the Consortium
for the Intelligent Management of the Electric Power Grid.

TELOS is said to be a "self-healing" system because it
automatically adjusts to new conditions. It is designed to prevent
power failures by anticipating the quickly changing demands of
industrial, commercial and residential electric customers. The
system would accurately predict power needs for the coming day and
then automatically meet those demands by better managing
electricity distribution and supplementing the grid with power
from small natural gas or diesel generators, which would kick on
when needed. (…)

Members of the consortium include engineers and graduate
students from Purdue University; Commonwealth Edison Co., a
utility serving northern Illinois; the University of Tennessee;
Fisk University; the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's
largest public power company; and the Electric Power Research
Institute, an organization of electric utilities.(…)

Fuzzy logic systems work by evaluating the overall accuracy,
instead of the fine precision, of a solution to a problem. The
human brain uses the same sort of approach to make effective
decisions.(…)

In a similar way, mathematical models can be used to predict
future changes in electricity demands by evaluating the present
usage in the context of environmental factors and historical
patterns. Such a system might reason along the following lines:
"The weather is getting warmer, it's the middle of summer and the
humidity is increasing. Therefore, when historical consumption
patterns are considered, we should expect the demand to rise by so
much in the next hour."

Utility company workers currently perform the prediction
role. They begin the day by trying to anticipate what the power
demand will be over the next several hours in the entire grid.
However, different parts of the service area sometimes have their
own distinctive microclimates that affect electricity use.
Therefore, engineers are aiming to break the service area into
LAGs.

TELOS is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2001 and to
be operating in 2003 on a trial basis in the Commonwealth Edison
and Tennessee Valley Authority service areas. If it works, TELOS
will be available for use on a national level, Tsoukalas
said.


	
Engineers
	Will Demonstrate New System To Prevent Power
	Failures, Purdue
  News/Science Daily, 01/03/02
 
 

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