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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 17, NO.

2, MAY 2002

451

Knowledge-Based System for Distribution System


Outage Locating Using Comprehensive Information
Yan Liu, Member, IEEE, and Noel N. Schulz, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper presents a knowledge-based system (KBS)


designed to locate distribution system outages using comprehensive data from customer trouble calls, a wireless automated meter
reading (AMR) system, and distribution supervisory control and
data acquisition (SCADA). The algorithm uses the on-demand read
capability of a wireless AMR system, which allows the utility to
communicate directly with the meter controllers. The algorithm
of the developed KBS has two major parts: an outage escalation
procedure and meter-polling procedure. The escalation procedure
involves searching for the outage region according to the comprehensive outage information. The meter-polling procedure includes
designing the meter-polling schema and confirming the outage locations based on the meter polling results. The algorithm was designed to handle both single outage and multiple outage situations.
The expert system shell G2 was used as the development tool.
Index TermsAutomated meter reading (AMR), distribution
systems, knowledge-based system (KBS), G2, outage locating.

I. INTRODUCTION

N OUTAGE management system (OMS) is one of the


major components of a distribution management system
(DMS). Outage location and service restoration are the main
functions of outage management system. An efficient outage locating method could dramatically reduce the outage duration,
and in turn reduce outage costs. In the recent power market,
deregulation has become a hot issue, which requires utilities to
provide better service. A fast and accurate outage management
system would be very important.
The sophistication of outage locating varies from utility to
utility. In some manually intensive processes, operators mark
reported outages on a map and manually escalate based on their
experience. In other cases, operators combine their experiences
with an available computer system to estimate the outage location. These methods provide an excellent basis on which to build
a knowledge-based system as they combine human experience
with available data.
In recent years, distribution supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) has begun to provide more system operation
information at the lower levels of the distribution system, such
as distribution transformers and fuses.
At the customer level, the installation of automated meter
reading (AMR) systems has helped utilities gain access to conManuscript received June 18, 2001; revised December 4, 2001. This work
was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Career Grant ECS
9733148.
Y. Liu is with GE Global Research Center, Niskayuna, NY 12309 USA.
N. N. Schulz is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762 USA
(e-mail: schulz@ece.msstate.edu).
Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8950(02)03829-4.

sumption data, power quality data and real-time outage data.


All of these information sources supplement customer trouble
calls. However, due to the complexity of the distribution system,
no single data source can provide sufficiently accurate outage
information. The outage-locating algorithm introduced in this
paper utilized the comprehensive real-time data from trouble
calls, distribution SCADA and AMR systems. It also provided
a meter-polling scheme based on the on-demand read feature of
a wireless AMR system to confirm the outage location.
II. PREVIOUS WORK
Various types of distribution OMSs have been developed and
implemented for decades. The objects studied in the OMS include data collected through trouble calls, distribution SCADA,
and AMR. Customer trouble calls have been widely used for
outage management systems. Distribution SCADA provides information on the system operation and status monitoring. Using
AMR systems for outage management applications is a new
technique currently under development.
A. Outage Information Sources
Most of the traditional outage handling methods are based
on the customer trouble calls [1], [2]. The absence of the customer might prolong the outage location determination process
and as the result will prolong the restoration action. The outage
handling methods using AMR systems provide the utility an
alternative way to access the customer information. However,
the data transmission is a big challenge, which will directly affect the accuracy and flexibility of data collection. Holtom and
Ponder gave an introduction of the automated metering technology at the 1999 IEEE PES Winter Meeting [3]. Their presentation mainly addressed the data collection issues of the new
automatic meters. However, the quality of AMR can be low
due to the problems associated with wireless signal transmission. In [4], Sridharan and Schulz developed an automated meter
reading data filter. Their system uses fuzzy logic to model uncertainties during meter reading and filters raw AMR data to
provide more accurate outage information for escalation algorithm.
Every single data source has its limitations in reporting some
specific information or under some special conditions [5]. Although previous works using a single distribution data source
have shown good performance, integrating all the available information sources can provide better information coverage and
in turn provide better performance. This project used the integrated data for outage locating.

0885-8950/02$17.00 2002 IEEE

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 17, NO. 2, MAY 2002

B. Outage Locating Algorithm


The simplest and least accurate method is known as polygoning. Such an approach requires the geographic location of
the caller to be known but does not require the connectivity of
the distribution network and location of protective devices. As
a result, the location of the outage device cannot be determined
[6].
The most widely used methods for outage determination are
based upon upstream tracing from the location of the caller
and identifying the first common device as the outage location,
called escalation methods [1]. These methods provide decent
outage determination results in the case of a single outage. The
problem with these methods is that they assume that one device
outage happens at one time. This is usually invalid during large
outage storm scenarios.
Several different methods have been proposed to improve the
quality of the outage determination procedure. In [7], Balakrishnan and Pahwa evaluated a revised outage escalation algorithm for storm and nonstorm conditions. Rodrigo and Pahwa
presented a statistical hypothesis testing based outage location
method [8].
Artificial intelligence (AI) methods are widely used in power
system applications. In 1986, Fukui and Kawakami from Hitachi Ltd., Japan presented an expert system using protective relays and circuit breaker information to estimate the fault section
in a power transmission system [9]. In [10], an expert system
was presented to diagnose the real-time fault according to the
information on the tripped relays and circuit breakers.
All the existing expert system algorithms seem to work well
and give accurate solutions. But as introduced above, instead of
providing exact fault elements, most of the expert systems were
developed based on the protective relays and circuit breaker information to estimate the fault region in the distribution substation. Moreover, the most commonly used traditional expert
system shells do not have a Windows-type users interface and
do not have the ability to communicate with the external database system, such as MS Access and Oracle.
In this project, an improved outage locating knowledge-based system using comprehensive outage information
and meter-polling scheme was designed and developed. The
comprehensive data used in the KBS are the filtered data
from the outage information filter, which was introduced in
[5]. The filtered outage information has higher accuracy and
low redundancy. In this project, the knowledge-based system
was built to provide the outage location throughout the entire
distribution network, from the substation to the customer. A
meter-polling scheme was designed based on the on-demand
read feature of a wireless AMR system to locate the outage
level and confirm the location. The modern expert system shell
(G2) was used, which is built under the Windows environment.
It provides an object-oriented structure and real-time data
communication capability with most advanced databases.
III. OUTAGE LOCATING ALGORITHM
A. Research Objectives
AI methods provide a researcher with efficient tools for the
application algorithms. Unlike other computer applications in

Fig. 1.

Overview of the whole outage processing project.

power system, such as unit commitment, power flow and stability analysis, which require large numerical programs, outage
management requires logic-based manipulation like a human
mind. An AI technique can provide a way to capture the experience of human operators and engineers.
Although the previous work tried to deal with system outages
depending on the trouble calls or AMRs, no single data source
can provide enough accurate outage information. For example,
a midnight power outage may not have enough customer calls.
The wireless communication devices on the automatic meters
may not send correct information during bad weather or during
a low battery condition. Distribution system SCADA is more
reliable compared with the previously mentioned two information sources. The distribution SCADA has been primarily used
for system analysis and operation purposes instead of outage
management. Moreover, due to the vast size and complexity of
the distribution system, monitoring lower levels of the system
may not be affordable, especially for smaller companies. Consequently, distribution SCADA equipment may not be available to
provide information at lower levels of the distribution system including the customer level. A data filter was developed to combine all of this available information and provide higher quality
outage information. The data filter is introduced in [5].
The objective of this project is to use all the available outage
information and apply an AI method to provide a more effective distribution outage-locating algorithm. The overview of the
whole project is shown in Fig. 1.
The outage-locating algorithm involves two major parts: primary outage locating and outage location confirmation by meter
polling. Fig. 2 shows the flowchart of this outage-locating algorithm.
B. Primary Outage Locating
The primary locating procedure used the traditional outage
escalation method to provide the outage region and the question
points. Escalation is roughly defined as raising the level of a
job from a downstream device to a device upstream [1]. This
operation is based on the assumption that it is more likely for
one device to fail than several. With this assumption, the outage
escalation tool searches the outage reports for common points
of connectivity. The primary locating procedure provides the
questioned devices that need to be checked.

LIU AND SCHULZ: KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM FOR DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM OUTAGE LOCATING

Fig. 2. Flow chart of the outage locating algorithm.

C. Outage Location Confirmation by Meter Polling


1) On-Demand Read of AMR: The AMR system discussed
in this project is a CellNet/Schlumberger based system [12].
The automatic meters do not communicate directly with the
utility. Instead, they send the information to a microcell controller (MCC). The utility can communicate directly with the
MCC by doing an on-demand read to retrieve information processed locally by the controller. This allows the utility to ask the
MCC for the most recent information received from a meter. The
data returned using the on-demand read has very high quality,
approximately 95% [4]. The on-demand read process can be
used to confirm the outage location before sending a crew to
the scene to check the status of the customer. A polling scheme
should be designed to allow the utility to learn as much information as possible about the status of the system with a limited
number of on-demand reads.
An on-demand read is based on the following assumptions
[11].
The meter query process time is small and the time taken
to execute a query and extract the read time is considered
negligible.
The packet success rate (PSR) is assumed to be constant
and varies little between the time of the outage and the
time the query is executed. PSR of the meter corresponds
to the probability of the meters ability to communicate
successfully to the gateway device.
2) Outage Location Confirmation by Meter-Polling: With
the installation of automatic meters, many utilities are beginning to see the possibilities for using an AMR system during
outage situations, but have been unable to develop and implement a plan to effectively use the information available. In this
section a meter-polling scheme will be introduced using on-de-

453

mand read feature of the AMR system to confirm the outage


locations.
a) Status of the meter polled: The meter status in the
MCC is the status of the meter at its last report time. Theoretically if a meter was out, the meter should send Power_Out_Flag
to the MCC and then the MCC should send the outage notifications to the utility. In this algorithm we only poll a meter
that the utility heard nothing from its associated MCC. If the
polling result is out, then the meter must have encountered
some technical problem so that either the status in the MCC is
wrong or the MCC failed to report the outage. The following
are the possible meter statuses based on the information from
meters polled.
1) On: The meter sent a regular packet after the reported
outage.
2) Probably on: The meter reported power up signal to a
MCC, but the MCC failed to send the report to the utility.
3) Unknown:
MCC did not send outage notification, but no new
packet was received from this meter after the reported outage, or;
the meter sent the last gasp signal to a MCC, but the
MCC failed to send this outage notification to the
utility.
b) Ranking: Before starting the meter polling, the meters
under the checked device have to be ranked based on the links to
the questioned point and the PSR of the meter. The meter with
highest rank will be polled first. The ranking is based on two
criteria:
Fewest links: The fewest number of devices between the
questioned point and the meter will minimize the possibility that the middle device failure caused the meter
outage.
Higher PSR: The meter with the highest PSR can provide
better quality data. If several meters have the same number
of links, the meter with highest PSR should be polled first.
The ranking method described above provides a good coverage of the network and ensures better quality of the information received from the meters polled.
c) Meter Polling Scheme: The purpose of meter polling
is to confirm the outage status of the questioned device. The
questioned device determined by the escalation method is the
device that has more than one power out downstream devices.
There are at least three possibilities that may cause this situation.
The upstream device of the questioned device has a power
outage, but no other devices under this device have reported an outage besides the questioned device.
The outage is at the questioned device.
There are multiple downstream device outages and no
outage at the questioned device.
Fig. 3 shows the flow chart of the meter-polling procedure.
Basically if two meters were polled with an unknown status,
the checked device would be considered to have an outage. If
any one of the meters is polled with on, the checked device
is on. The procedure also involves the meter ranking and
reranking. If there is more than one questioned device, the
procedure will start at the highest level.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 17, NO. 2, MAY 2002

Fig. 4.

Diagram and the outage information of test case 1.

Fig. 5.

Primary locating result of the test case 1.

Fig. 3. Flowchart of the meter-polling scheme.

By polling a limited number of meters, the algorithm can


obtain the best description of the system status, and pinpoint
the exact outage device(s). Moreover, the algorithm can also
provide the additional checking suggestion based on the additional information available, such as weather conditions and the
outage history of the vulnerable devices.
More details of the design and implementation of the algorithm can be found in [12].
IV. TEST CASES
The algorithm was tested on two test feeders. Feeder 1 is a
simple distribution feeder with five switches and 70 customers.
Feeder 2 is a more complicated distribution feeder, which has
255 customers, 88 transformers, and 76 protective devices including fuses, switches, and a feeder breaker. The outage location assumed in the test case indicates the outage level, which
may be the protective device at the outage level or the monitoring device itself.
A. Test Case on Test Feeder 1
Fig. 4 is the diagram of test feeder 1. The outage report locations are marked by X in the diagram. After the system updated
the status of the system components according to the outage
reports, the outage escalation was performed automatically by
scanning the escalation procedure related rules. In Fig. 4, a question mark indicates the questioned points found by the escala-

tion procedure. Fig. 5 is the system dialog showing the primary


locating results.
Our meter-polling scheme was performed to confirm the
outage locations. The polled meters are indicated by a lighning
bolt in the diagram. The meters under BK01 were polled
first. A meter under the transformer XR23 was polled with
status on. This result cleared out the possibility that BK01
had an outage. Then meters under SW01 were polled. Two
meters were polled with unknown status, so SW01 was
assumed out. A meter under SW03 was polled as on, which
means SW03 is on. Two meters under SW04 were polled
as unknown. The status of the meter being polled is shown
in Table I.
The final outage locations were pinpointed at switch SW01
and SW04. The system also suggested additional checking at
customer EC39 and EC45, which could have a customer level
outage or an internal outage. The final report of the system is
shown in Fig. 6.
This example describes how the meter-polling scheme was
designed to confirm and verify the outage location. It also
demonstrates that the outage locating KBS can provide a more
accurate outage location.

LIU AND SCHULZ: KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM FOR DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM OUTAGE LOCATING

455

TABLE I
METER-POLLING PROCEDURE OF TEST CASE 1

Fig. 7.

Part of feeder diagram for case 3.

TABLE III
TEST RESULT OF OUTAGE SCENARIOS OF CASE 3

Fig. 6.

Final outage location of test case 1.


TABLE II
TEST CASES OVERVIEW

TABLE IV
SUMMARY OF THE TEST SCENARIOS

B. More Test Cases on Test Feeder 2


Totally, 15 cases with different outage report scenarios were
tested on feeder 2. These test cases included single outage and
multiple outage situations. Table II summarizes the test cases by
outage types.
An example is given to show the test scenarios of a single fuse
outage situation (case 3). Due to the size and complexity of the
test feeder, only the related part of the feeder diagram is shown
here. Fig. 7 is the part of the test feeder 2 diagram for case 3.
Table III lists the test scenarios of case 3, which is a single
fuse outage situation. The table shows that the proposed algorithm can handle most of the outage situations, which cannot be
correctly pinpointed by the traditional escalation method.
More testing results for various outage scenarios of all the test
cases listed in Table II can be found in [12]. Table IV summarizes the test scenarios. By comparing the number of successful

identification in each scenario, it shows that the proposed algorithm has over 60% better performance than the traditional
escalation method. The total processing time is 3 s, excluding
meter-polling time. As addressed in [11], average meter-polling
time is less than 12 s/m.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 17, NO. 2, MAY 2002

V. CONCLUSION
In this project, an outage locating and confirmation knowledge-based system was designed, developed and tested. The
purpose of this study was to find an efficient method to use the
comprehensive outage information and provide a fast and effective way to locate the distribution outages. This work represents
an extension of some preliminary work that involved using automated meter reading in the distribution system outage handling
[4]. A knowledge-based system (KBS) was developed to provide an integrated approach to solving the challenge of outage
locating. It creates a list with the possible outage locations and
the additional checking suggestions. The KBS can take the filtered outage information from the fuzzy data filter [5]. It performs the outage escalation to find the primary outage locations
and then conduct the meter polling to confirm the locations.
Some major contributions of this work include the following:
1) using the comprehensive outage information from trouble
calls, wireless automated meter readings (AMR) and distribution SCADA for the outage locating;
2) studying the heuristics and rules for outage locating;
3) designing and developing a meter-polling scheme for the
outage location confirmation;
4) using the modern expert system shell G2 to provide advanced operation methods and graphical interface.
The on-demand read feature of the AMR system provides
utilities the convenience of indirectly communicating with the
customers. The meter-polling scheme designed in this project
provides an effective way to confirm the outage locations by
reading the meter reports in the meter controller.
While our test cases used specific systems for outage information, the algorithm was designed to use general data from
various outage information sources. With further development
and testing, this intelligent outage handling system can be integrated into daily distribution system operations for locating
outages. It will help improve the quality of the outage handling,
reduce outage-locating errors, and reduce the cost of the outages.
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[7] R. Balakrishnan and A. Pahwa, A computer assisted intelligent storm
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[8] P. Deepal Rodrigo, A. Pahwa, and J. E. Boyer, Location of outage in
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[11] R. Fischer, A. Laakonen, and N. N. Schulz, A general polling algorithm
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Michigan Technol. Univ., 2001.

Yan Liu (M01) received the B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. degrees from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, and the Ph.D. degree from Michigan Technological
University (MTU), Houghton, in 1995, 1998, and 2001, respectively.
Currently, she is with the GE Global Research Center, Niskayuna, NY. Her
research interests are computer applications in power system analysis, distribution management systems, and distributed generation.

Noel N. Schulz (S93M96SM00) received the B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. degrees from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech),
Blacksburg, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University
of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 1988, 1990, and 1995, respectively.
Currently, she is an Associate Professor with the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department, Mississippi State University. She has prior teaching
experience at Virginia Tech; the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks; and
Michigan Technological University, Houghton.
Dr. Schulz is an NSF Career award recipient. She is a member of PES and
ASEE.

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