9220855 Varaiya The electric power industry is being significantly restructured in order to improve performance by reducing capital expenditures through better equipment utilization, by reducing fuel cost through better inter-firm coordination, and by offering differentiated services that better match customer needs. The realization of these performance gains will require a vastly expanded capability to monitor and control the entire power network. It is proposed to design and implement a laboratory- scale Distribution Network Management System (DNMS). Logically, the DNMS will be organized into three layers:the communication facility which permits management stations to exchange monitoring and control information will remote physical elements such as distribution capacitors and customer meters; the application facility which permits implementation of algorithms for particular functions such as adjusting capacitors to minimize losses; and the interpretation facility which hides from the other facilities the heterogeneity of the physical elements. The DNMS system will be designed and tested on simulators of the bulk power and distribution systems. The research will build a recent work on distribution automation and power utility communication architecture, and on recent work on telecommunications network management. ***
