Using Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Solving Power Systems Problems at

Undergraduate Level

Robert T. F. Ah King and Harry C. S . Rughooputh

University of Mauritius
Reduit, Mauritius
r.ahkimg@uom.ac.mu

Abstract- This paper describes the concept and use of
artificial intelligence techniques for solving problems
in electrical power systems in the final year of an
undergraduate programme in Electrical and
Electronic Engineering.
- Nowadays, the analysis and
design of power systems involve numerical computer
modeling and simulations. Besides the classical
techniques, which a r e conventionally used for
analyzing power systems, artificial intelligence
techniaues have come U D as a Ioeical solution to the
large-scale, non-linear nature inherent in systems
as can be observed in Dower svstems literature. The
integration of these new techniques for power system
analysis enables better understanding of the subject
with hands-on practice on personal computers through
simulations. Existing programmes in power systems in
most universities can easily be extended to include a
module in AI applications in power systems.
1 Introduction
This paper describes the concept and use of artificial
intelligence techniques for solving power systems
problems in the final year of an undergraduate programme
in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Nowadays, the
analysis and design of power systems has been affected
extensively by the widespread use of computers. With the
power of computers, steady-state and transient analysis of
large interconnected power systems can easily be
performed. Thus, engineering educators can integrate the
use of computers into the curriculum. Moreover, besides
the classical techniques, which are conventionally used for
analyzing power systems, artificial intelligence (also
termed as computational intelligence or soft computing)
techniques have come up as a logical solution to the large-
scale, non-linear nature inherent in such systems as can be
observed in power systems literamre. The integration of
these new techniques for power system analysis enables
better understanding of the subject with hands-on practice
on personal computers through simulations.
The fmal year programme in power systems include
topics such as Unit Commitment; Economic Dispatch;
Load Flow Studies; Control of Generation; Power System
Security; which are fundamental to an understanding of
the subject by future power engineers. The following
sections describes the application of AI techniques to three
particular areas: Economic Dispatch, Transient Stability
and Power System Control and outlines some results and
discussions.
Economic dispatch
The economic dispatch (ED) problem is one of the most
impomnt Optimization problems in a power system. The
problem is traditionally solved using mathematical
programming based on optimization techniques such as
lambda-iteration method, gradient method and dynamic
programing method and Other programming
However, neural networks have attracted massive interest
owing to their powerful capabilities such as learning,
optimization and fault-tolerance. These networks have
been applied to various fields of complex, non-linear and
large-scale power systems with varying degrees of
success. One of the most popular optimization networks,
the Hopfield network, has been employed to solve the ED
problems for units having continuous or quadratic fuel
cost functions. The Hopfield model belongs to one kind
of continuous and deterministic model and the input-
output relationship for its neurons bas been described by a
sigmoidal function. The objective function of the
economic dispatch problem is transformed into a Hopfield
energy function and numerical iterations are applied to
minimize the energy function.
The problem of fmding the optimal combination of
power generation which minimizes the total cost while
satisfying the total required demand can be mathematically
stated as follows:
where
C: total cost
a , b,, c,: cost coefficients of generator i
Pi:the generated power of generator I
In minimizing total cost, the following constraints should
be satisfied:
(a) Power balance constraints
PD +PL = Z P i (2)
j
where
PD:total load
PL:transmission losses

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 The transmission losses can be represented as The power output value P, can be represented using the
PL =XXPzB,Pl output V, of neuron I with a modified sigmoidal function

11+
' I as follows:
(3)
where
B, : transmission losses coefficient
P,= g, (U,)=(P,,, - P,,, e+j+pj-.
(b) Maximum and minimum limits of power
The generation power of each generator should lie The economic dispatch with Hopfield neural network
between maximum limit and minimum limit. That is, has been implemented using Matlab for a 3-generator test
system taken from [3] for 3 cases. Total load in each case
Ptm s P,s p,,, is 850 MW. Transmission losses are neglected in case 1
and 2.
where
P,,,": the minimum generation of power (a) Case 1
P,,,: the maximum generation of powei Table 1 gives the data used for case 1.

The dynamic characteristics of each neuron can be Table 1: Cost coefficients for case 1
described by the following differential equation Unit I U I b I c P,," I P- I
1 II 561.0 I 7.92 I 0.001562 I 150.0 I 600.0
(4) 2 I 310.0 I 7.85 I 0.00194 I 100.0 I 400.0
where 3 78.0 7.97 0.00482 50.0 200.0
U,: input of neuron i
TI: interconnection conductance from the output (b) Case2
of neuron j to the input of neuron i All the conditions are the same as case 1, but the cost
Tii: self connection conductance of neuron i function for unit 1 becomes
I,: external input to neuron i C, = O.O0128P? + 6.48Pl + 459 ($/hour)
4: output of neuron j
and (c) Case3
V, = g,(llJ: the output value of neuron i All the conditions are the same as in case 1 except
that the constraint equation includes the network
g, (uJ=
I.sexp
1

(-3
g, : the input-output function of neuron i
(5) losses. Simplified loss formula is given by
L = O.O0003P?+ 0.OOOOYP~+ 0.00012PI' (MW)

The results ofthe case studies are shown in Table 2.

u o : a coefficient that determines the shape of the
sigmoidal function C MeUlod Pi P, PI Told Told
(Mw) 0 pwer COS1
5 0 (m)
The energy function of the continuous Hopfield model
can be expressed as 393.2 334.6 122.2 850.0 8194.3

. I network
I 392.740 I 334.210 I 122.084 I 849.034 I 8185.5 I
I I 1 I II
Lapmgc
600.0 187.1 62.9 850.0 7252.1
3
600.000 186.451 62.643 849.095 7245.1

In order to solve the ELD problem, the following 865.8

435.1 300.0 130.7 8344.3
energy function is defmed by combining the objective 866.164
400.761 340.716 124.686 L=17,132 8342.4
function Eq. (I) with the constraint Eq. (2) [ I , 21: network

Fig. 1 shows the variation of energy versus iteration

where positive weighting factors A and B introduce the
relative importance for their respective associated terms.
times for case 3. The corresponding output variation of
each unit is shown in Fig. 2. During simulations, it was
found that the initial solutions did not affect the fmal
results for all cases. Weighting factors A = 0.09 and B =
0.019 were maintained for all the 3 cases.

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 modified Euler method by a C program and the MLP was
also coded in C.

Data for the 4-generator system [6] was generated for a

three-phase fault on line 3-4 near bus 3 with pre-fault
system topology restored, i.e. the faulted line remains in
service after fault clearance. Load level selected are
between 0.6 and 2.0 relative to the nominal values and
power factors of the loads have been maintained at their
nominal values. No loadflow solution was obtained for
the loading levels 1.3 to 2.0 for topology (e).

101. i p3 Inwt features for the MLP:

I . Rotor angle relative to inertial centre of angle (COA)
901

acceptable steady-state operating condition. The CCT is a (P,; -Pd'

measure of the dynamic security of a power system and is A,; = I =I, ...,n (11)
Mi
a complex function of power system topology, load level
and fault characterisrics. The calculation of CCT is 4. Driving point susceptance Bc; for each machine
computationally demanding involving multiple runs of the internal bus following removal of the faulted line. This
transient stability program. A neural network is therefore represents the post-fault strength of the connection of
used as an estimator for Critical Clearing Time (CCT). the machine to the rest of the network. [7]
The Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) is trained by the A,, = B, (12)
backpropagation learning algorithm [5] on data for a 4- It is to be noted that in [7] the faulted line was
generator test system (see Appendix) under a three phase removed after fault clearance while the prefault and the
to ground fault with prefault topology restored after fault postfault system topology are the same in this study.
clearance. Several features 60m the power system have 5 . Total system "energy adjustments" [7]
been used as input in combination to fmd out their effect
on the generalization capability of the neural network. A,i = E N = z(P,,. a d i ) (13)
I 4
The sample power system CCT were obtained using a
where

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 EN : energy adjustments in the system
n : number of machines in the study
Table 4 shows the actual CCT range for loading levels
0.6 to 2.0 and the respective maximum error of the
estimated CCT for the different topologies.
Table 4: Maximum errors in estimated CCT
Test 1: 3 input features: Ali, AX, Alias used by Sobajic
e t al. [SI
The MLP has 12 input, 6 hidden and 1 output nodes. The
sum of squared error decreased to 0.0002 after 3760
epochs of training with a learning rate of 0.31 and
momentum of 0.99. The MLP is able to estimate the CCT
for 5 topologies (a), (b), (c), (d) and (g) quite accurately.
For topologies (a) and (b), this is obvious since the MLP
was trained from this set. The errors for the other 3 cases,
(e), (0 and (h) are quite high. This system was
investigated by Sobajic et al. [SI, but the predicted values
of CCT for only one case ((c) line 2-5 removed) was
presented.
Test 2: 4 input features: AI],Ali, All, Adi
The MLP has 16 input, 6 hidden and 1 output nodes. The
sum of squared error decreased to 0.0002 after 6973
epochs of training with a learning rate of 0.31 and
momentum of 0.93. The network is able to closely predict
from the (est set the CCT's for only topologies (c) and (g).
The addition of driving point susceptance of the machine
internal buses to the other 3 features seems to deteriorate
the results of Test 1.
Test 3: 4 input features: AIi,AX,Ali, As
The MLP has 13 input, 6 hidden and 1 output nodes. The
sum of squared error decreased to 0.0002 after 13431
epochs of training with a learning rate of 0.31 and
momentum of 0.93. The addition of the energy
adjustments feature seems to improve the results of Test 1
for loading levels above 1.5 p.u. for topology (0.
Test 4: 5 input features: Ali, Azi, AI^, A4i, As as used by
Hobson et al. [7]
The MLP has 17 input, 6 hidden and 1 output nodes. The
sum of squared error decreased to 0.0002 after 6881
epochs of training with a learning rate of 0.31 and
momentum of 0.93. In this case, the network is able to
predict closely the CCT for only topologies (c) and (g) as
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in Test 2, while the errors for the other 6 topologies are
quite high. The addition of the 2 additional features
suggested by Hobson et al. [7]seems to deteriorate the
results.
The driving point susceptance feature does not help in
improving the CCT prediction in this study. It appears
that the trained MLP using two network topologies
(normal topology, i.e. all lines in senrice and line 3-4
removed) cannot generalize for the other topologies. The
paper by Hobson et al. 171 has addressed this matter using
two systems (4-generator and 20-generator power
systems). For their frst system (4-generator), the
maximum error in CCT with training data was 0.23 s.
Under interrogation (testing using previously unseen
facts), the maximum error was 0.1 1 s. Attempts'made to
apply ANN techniques ,to the 20-generator proved to be
intractable. It was concluded that the range of CCT errors
from the ANN on interrogation by previously unseen facts,
and in some cases facts which have been used in the
process, is at present too large for use of this method on a
practical system. In their discussion, however, they
pointed out that instead of using the CCT as the target
value, the ANN trained to a single system stable or
unstable criterion is able to obtain the correct answer in all
cases studied. However, there are still the limitations on
the degree of difference in network structure and it is not
possible to mix system topologies or generating
conditions. Moreover, these authors have applied the
stableiunstable training criterion to power systems having
4, 5 , and 10 power stations using coherency techniques,
which greatly reduce the size of the ANN without any
apparent loss in performance, and have obtained errorless
results [7].
4 Power System Control
The ability of neural networks for efficient generalization
and adaptation make them excellent candidates for the
learning control of dynamical systems. An Adaptive
Neural Network Controller (ANNC) [9] has been
proposed for damping the power system oscillations by
backpropagating system-output errors through the neural
network. This method has been used to introduce students
with the capabilities of a neural network as a power system
controller.
The swing equations for the controlled power system
with n machines are given by:
The target steady state of each generator after a
disturbance is prescribed by:
 A@,([/) = 0; Ah, (f/) = 0:Vi = 1,,2 ,..., n (15) with the rest of the system. The critical clearing time for
this fault scenario is 0.42 s. Figures 4 and 5 show the
where Aw,(t,) and A h , ( ( , ) denote the fmal states of
rotor trajectories and speed deviations of the uncontrolled
deviations of rotor speed and acceleration of generator i, system, respectively.
respectively. In practice, the control power U,( t ) is
usually constrained ( U,, 5 U,(1) S U,% ).
This controller is trained using system-output error by
updating the hidden to output weights:

wi,i(t+A1)=w,,i(f)+rlYGIYIX1,(f); (16)
GA = (Yd(f)--y(1))D(G)X21(1)(1-X21(f)), ___ 0 1 2 3 4 5
where the direction matrix is given by:
time (I)
D(G) = sign[$)
Fig. 4: Rotor trajectories of the uncontrolled power system
The sign of a matrix M is defmed as the matrix formed by
the sign of the corresponding elements ofM. The tracking 2e 100
G2
errors represented by the deviations in rotor speed A W
and rotor acceleration A(I, are used as inputs to the
ANNC. When m and (I, are used, the direction matrix
for the power system is given by:
5 1
2 -50
1
D(G) = [@Go) D(G+)lT s o 1 2 3 4 5

time (I)

Fig. 5: Rotor speed deviations of the uncontrolled power

=[-I -117 system
Since the power system (Eq. (14)) is a negative-responded The control action is delayed by 0.1 s allowing for the
system, the delta error from Eq. (16) is modified practical implementation of the control procedure
accordingly: consisting of fault detection, telecommunication time and
computation time required for transient stability control.
8; = ( ( ~(1)d- Y , (t)P(G, )+
The performance of the controller was evaluated using a
( Y ~ ( ( ~ ) - Y ~ ~ , ( I ) ) D ( G ~ ~ , ) ) X Z I ( ~ (191
) ( ~ - X ~ I (quadratic
~)) performance index J:
= (Aw(t)D(G,)+
'I
AUj(t)D(G,))X,i (W - X m (f)) J = l(Aw)2df (21)
0
The sigmoid activation function forces the ANNC
output to be within the range (O,l), although the control This performance index J sums the square of the deviation
uO), is limited by the range (Um,", Urn-), Therefore the of rotor speed at each sampling instant. The ANNC was
ANNC output should he scaled to trained until J C 0.2 is reached and tested with a fault
clearing time of 0.83 s. Figure 6 shows the learning
= x2,(W,, - U,, ) .t U,, (20) capability of the NNC with a single hidden layer of 24
nodes. At fust, the weights of the ANNC are set to small
In the simulations Urnin= -2.0 and U,, = 2.0.
random values. The learning rate was set to 0.01 for all
simulations. Figures 7, 8 and 9 show the rotor angle, rotor
speed deviation and power control of generator G3 after
training, respectively. .

a
.-
Fig. 3: Generator with ANNC
5/.j
Using the 3-generator test system [6], a three-phase to
ground fault was simulated on line 3-4 near bus 3. This is {- 0 1<
0 10 20 30 40
one of the worst possible location for the fault in the
transmission system. The disturbance was cleared in 0.43 number nitraining epochs
s by removing line 3-4. For this scenario, the uncontrolled Fig. 6: Learning cuwe for ANNC on G3
power system is unstable as generator 3 accelerates away
from the other three generators and loses synchronism

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0.11 J
0 1 2 3 4 5
lime (I)
Fig. 7: Rotor angle of generator G3
=.
2- 2,, I
time (I)
Fig. 8: Speed deviation of generator G3
c1’ 2,
1 I
’ l k .
0 1 2 3 4 5
time ( I )
Fig. 9: Power control of generator G3
It is to he noted that the oscillations are not well
damped for the single generator controlled case. This can
be explained by the presence of generator GI having a
large inertia. The control acting solely on generator G3 is
influenced by the oscillation of generator GI. Training
the ANNC to a lower value of the performance index J
will increase the damping capability of the NNC at the
expense of longer training times. It was observed that the
ANNC trained on one generator (G3) has learned the
controls and is able to generalize for generators of
different ratings. Therefore, it is sufficient to train the
controller on a single generator only.
5 Conclusions
In this paper, artificial intelligence techniques have been
used as a complementary support for the teaching of
power systems at undergraduate level. Three specific
applications have been tried in this context and this
enterprise can, of course, he extended to other problems
where AI has found a niche. These techniques have come
up as a logical solution to the large-scale, non-linear
nature inherent in such systems as can be observed in
power systems literature where conventional methods
cannot perform accordingly. The integration of these new
47
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techniques for power system analysis enables better
understanding of the subject with hands-on practice on
personal computers through simulations. A I techniques
should defmitely be integrated in the power systems
course in every university. Other AI techniques such as
fuzzy set theorykystems, wavelets, genetic algorithms can
also he easily introduced.
Appendix
Fig. A: One-line diagram of test system.
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