Electrical Power & Energy Systems, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.
131–140, 1998
PII: S0142-0615(97)00036-7
Optimization and learning of
load restoration strategies
Tatjana Kostic and Alain J Germond
Laboratoire de Réseaux d’Énergie Électrique,
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne,
CH-1015, Switzerland
Juan J Alba
Instituto de Investigación Tecnológica, Universidad
Pontificia Comillas de Madrid, Alberto Aguilera, 23,
28015, Madrid, Spain
This paper describes an application of optimization and
machine learning to load restoration in a generation–
transmission system. An optimization procedure, combining
a genetic algorithm and a power system dynamic simulator,
generates the appropriate sequence of operations for each
state of the power system. A machine learning technique
(induction of decision trees) is applied to extract decision
criteria that will guide the load restoration after a general-
ized black-out. The paper also presents the results of apply-
ing these techniques to a power system of realistic size. q
1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.
Keywords: restoration, genetic algorithms, machine
learning, simulation tools
I. Introduction
The stressful conditions in which service restoration is
carried out after a generalized blackout (limited time, occur-
rence of unexpected events, uncertainties about the
behaviour of the power system) would make any decision-
making tool able to assist the operators in this task extremely
useful.
A restoration procedure can be divided as follows:
• In the first stage, the so-called skeleton of the power
system is built by synchronizing the available power
plants and energizing the main lines connecting them.
The voltage set-points of the generators are usually set to
values lower than the nominal voltage and some loads are
picked up, to avoid overvoltages resulting from energiza-
tion of long unloaded lines. If the system is split into
islands, the above-mentioned procedure is applied to each
island, after which the islands are synchronized among
themselves.
• Most of the load is picked up in the second stage (that will
be called the load restoration stage). The voltage and
power set-points of the generators must be increased as
131
q 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
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0142-0615/98 $19.00+0.00
this task progresses. Simultaneously, transmission capa-
city is reinforced by energizing additional circuits.
Frequently, service restoration plans are well determined
only for the first stage. There are two reasons for this: (a) the
plan is guided by the natural order of control actions (e.g. a
stand-by unit cannot be synchronized if there is no energized
link to it; a link can be energized only if there is voltage on its
end, given by a black start unit), and (b) during this stage, the
power system is highly vulnerable concerning violation of
operating constraints.
On the contrary, the load restoration (LR) stage is con-
sidered less critical, and the operators are left to take
decisions about control actions according to their own
experience. They are likely to reason guided by their intui-
tion and the experience acquired in operating the system in
its normal state. This approach may lead to some actions
(e.g. load connection at an excessive rate) that threaten the
whole state reached until then. Therefore, there is a need for
better procedures for the load restoration stage, and even for
computer-assisted decision making tools.
There are plenty of works concerning service restoration
at transmission level; a comprehensive bibliographic review
of this subject can be found in [1]. However, the load
restoration sub-problem has not received much attention.
Although most of the bibliography in this area briefly
discusses it, no solutions are widely accepted.
I.1 The proposed approach
The determination of an acceptable sequence of control
actions to pick up load is a highly combinatorial optimization
problem with multiple constraints. Genetic algorithms have
proved quite a successful technique for solving that kind of
problem. In this work, a genetic algorithm has been used to
generate optimized load restoration (LR) sequences for
different states of the power system, respecting the oper-
ating constraints. The genetic algorithm has been coupled
with a power system dynamic simulator, whose results are
used by the evaluation function of the genetic algorithm.
132 Load restoration strategies: T. Kostic et al.
The appropriate load restoration sequence depends on the
power system state, that consists of:
• The pre-blackout loads, that are assumed to be the loads to
be restored.
• The availability of generating units and circuits at the end
of the first service restoration stage (i.e. when the network
skeleton has been created).
An ideal use of the GA-based procedure would be the
generation of an LR sequence for a given state of the power
system. However, this approach is not feasible in a real
environment, because of the required computing time. A
useful solution to this problem should be the use of simple
rules to select the most appropriate sequence to pick up load;
the simulator could provide some additional refinement to
the suggestions of the rules, to cope with unexpected situa-
tions. Nevertheless, these rules would depend on the parti-
cular network involved, as there is not enough experience to
write a reliable set of rules for a generic power system.
Machine learning techniques can be used to extract this
experience. Induction algorithms are a subset of machine
learning techniques that are able to extract useful and
systematic knowledge from examples. Decision trees are a
subset of induction techniques that have proven efficient and
robust in similar problems. They could be applied to the
service restoration problem as follows (see Figure 1):
• Different power system states are explored off-line. For
each of them, an appropriate sequence for picking up load
is generated, using the GA-based optimization. This
information is gathered in the training set.
• An induction algorithm generates a decision tree that
captures rules relating power system pre-blackout data
and LR sequences.
• The decision tree must be validated, using additional data
(grouped in the so-called test set). The tree construction
must be adjusted if needed.
• The decision tree can be used by an operator support tool
Figure 1. Overall structure of the proposed
approach
to select the adequate strategy for a real problem of service
restoration.
Notice that the most time-consuming tasks (optimization,
generation and validation of the decision trees) are carried
out off line, while only the application of the criteria coded in
the decision tree is performed on line.
Decision trees have been chosen instead of other machine
learning techniques since they provide an output that is easy
to validate: a decision tree presents a clear organization of
the relevant attributes, that can easily be analyzed by a
domain expert. Other learning techniques provide black-
box type solutions, that sometimes can give a better perfor-
mance but are more difficult to analyze. Since the work
reported in this paper is still in a preliminary phase, and its
main objective was to evaluate the potential applicability of
this technique, the ‘‘transparency’’ of the decision trees has
been considered an important characteristic.
I.2 Overview of the paper
Section II presents a brief introduction to genetic algorithms.
The power system dynamic simulator is described in Section
III, to facilitate the detailed discussion of the GA-based
optimization in Section IV. Section V presents some results.
Section IV introduces the decision tree technique. Section
VII describes the combination of the GA-optimization and
the dynamic simulator to generate examples for constructing
and validating the decision tree. Some results are presented
and discussed in Section VIII. Final remarks and conclusions
follow in Section IX.
II. Genetic algorithms
Genetic algorithms [2,3] were developed in the early 70s as
an attempt to model adaptive systems, and are inspired by
natural selection and reproduction. They combine the
random search and hill-climbing techniques with the idea
of competition. This method can be used for different
purposes, including optimization.
II.1 Principles
GAs manipulate a population of individuals, denoted as
parents, to produce a new population, denoted as children.
The quality of each individual is measured by the fitness.
Children are created through the application of different
operators to the parents. These operators are designed so that
children are expected to have higher fitness than their
parents.
The main GA operators [2] are selection, crossover and
mutation. The selection operator chooses the couple of
parents that will produce a couple of children. The better
the fitness of a parent is, the higher is its chance of being
selected for reproduction. The crossover operator mixes the
genetic material of the selected couple of parents. Finally,
the mutation operator acts on a single child, introducing
random modifications that are independent of the parents’
genetic material. In the next generation, the children become
parents, and a new child population is created. The process
continues during a given number of generations, or until
some other criterion is satisfied. This artificial reproduction
of individuals simulates what happens with chromosomes in
real world reproduction.
II.2 GAs for optimization
The population of individuals is randomly initialized with a
set of feasible solutions of the given optimization problem.
 Load restoration strategies: T. Kostic et al. 133

Each individual is a coded representation of a feasible
solution (for instance, an acceptable sequence for picking up
load). The choice of the coding strongly depends on the
problem that is to be solved. The information contained in
the individual must be later decoded to evaluate its fitness;
the evaluation function captures the objective function (in
this case, maximize the picked up load) and the constraints of
the problem (frequency, voltage and current limits, etc.).
The search for the solution is carried out through the
reproduction process described above. GA optimization
explores a problem’s space of solutions by random search,
not across the whole solution space, but only through the
regions that are chosen considering the value of the objective
function.
III. The dynamic simulator
The selection of LR sequences must take into account the
power system dynamic response to avoid violations of the
operating constraints (frequency, voltage, power flow)
during the load restoration. This response is used to evaluate
the sequences and select the most appropriate ones. A power
system dynamic simulator [4,5] is used for these purposes.
The dynamic simulator (DS) is able to analyze the power
system in different operating states, particularly during
service restoration. It can simulate the response of the
whole network, or its islands, to different LR actions.
Given the need to simulate an important number of restora-
tion scenarios, speed has been the main design requirement,
leading to the use of simplified models of the power system
components.
Mechanical aspects of production units (prime mover,
speed governor) are dynamically simulated thanks to a
model of the long-term dynamics. The electrical model of
production units (alternator, exciter, governor) has not been
implemented, but the steady state values of system voltages
and reactive power of units are obtained, in discrete time
intervals, from the load flow computation. Thanks to this
decoupled modelling of mechanical and electrical aspects of
the power system, significant savings of processing time are
obtained, while keeping a satisfactory precision.
commands (e.g. put a branch in service while it is already
in service), are skipped.
III.2 Execution flow
When a command is entered, the dynamic part of the DS
computes the response of the power system. The evolution of
the average system frequency and the active power output of
generators are simulated until the steady state is reached.
This state is quasi-steady, since it has been obtained with
power losses corresponding to the power system state before
the execution of the command. The load flow is then used to
compute the system voltages, reactive power of units and
actual power losses. Finally, the dynamic part is executed
again to take into account the actual power losses, computed
by the load flow. When the actual steady state is reached, the
DS is ready to process the next command.
The power system is considered to be in steady state if the
frequency is constant during ten consecutive integration
cycles, and in unstable state if the frequency is out by
62% of the nominal frequency (50 Hz). These two condi-
tions are tested after each integration cycle to control the
simulation. As said above, when the steady state is reached,
either the load flow is run, or the next command is expected.
If the state is found to be unstable, the execution of the DS is
interrupted.
IV. Optimization of load restoration sequences
GA optimization has been applied to generate load restora-
tion sequences [5]. Each individual in the population is a
coded representation of a possible solution, i.e. an LR
sequence. The ‘‘quality’’ of a sequence depends on the
evolution of the power system during its execution, that is
obtained by the DS. Therefore, the DS decodes each indivi-
dual to obtain a solution (the evolution of the power system
when a load restoration sequence is executed) that can be
evaluated. The results from the DS are thus used by the
evaluation function to compute the fitness for each indivi-
dual. The execution flow of the GA-based optimization is
shown in Figure 2.

III.1 Commands
Commands represent LR actions. From the complete set of
available commands, only those that are relevant to the
present work will be briefly described.
• gen set unit: Increase the power set-point of unit to the next
set-point level. For a thermal unit, the power set-point
levels are [20; 50; 90], expressed as a percentage of its
rated power P n; the load increment rate is 0.05 P n/min. For
a hydraulic unit, the power set-point levels are
[15; 30; 45; 60; 75; 90], expressed as a percentage of
its rated power P n; load increment is assumed to be
instantaneous.
• gen vol unit v: The voltage set-point of unit will be
increased by v [p.u.] if v . 0, or decreased by v [p.u.] if
v , 0.
• loa set load p: Pick up p [MW] of load; whenever p MW
are picked up, q MVAR are also connected at the same
bus, being q ¼ (Q i/P i)p, where Qi and Pi are the pre-
blackout loads at the bus.
• bra on branch: Put circuit branch in service.
Figure 2. The GA-based optimization generates an
Before the execution of a command by the DS, different optimized sequence for a given state of the power
tests are performed to determine its validity. Invalid system
134 Load restoration strategies: T. Kostic et al.
IV.1 Initial population
Since this work is focused on the load restoration stage, it
will be assumed that the network skeleton has been con-
structed with the available units and circuits, (except for the
second circuits in double circuit lines). Voltage set-point of
units is 0.95 U nom, and the power set-point is 0 MW. There-
fore, the actions to be executed (LR actions) consist in
picking up load, increasing the voltage and power set-
points of units and energizing those circuits that were not
connected in the skeleton. The list of possible actions stores
all the LR actions. The initial population is composed of
sequences, each of which is randomly filled with actions
from the list of possible actions.
For each load bus L, there are three actions: loa set L 100,
loa set L 75, loa set L 50. For each unit G, there are two
actions: gen set G, gen vol G 0.02. For each double circuit B,
there is one action: bra on B. Each action has an associated
probability of being included in an individual of the initial
population. This allows higher priorities to those actions that
are known to be more frequently found in successful LR
sequences, thus reducing the expected duration of the GA
search.
The maximal length of an individual is greater that the
expected length of an acceptable sequence. Redundancy of
actions that compose an individual is needed to reach 100%
of restored load. In all cases, it is up to the DS to reject an
action if it is not possible (e.g. if load L1 is completely
restored, any eventual action concerning this load will be
rejected).
Only individuals with positive fitness value (see next
section) are accepted in a population, to speed up the GA
search. This constraint can make the creation of the initial
population from the elementary actions a time consuming
task; this problem can be solved by randomly selecting the
initial population from a previously created set of individuals
with positive fitness. This set must contain acceptable
sequences for any power system state.
IV.2 Evaluation
Each individual in the population represents an LR
sequence. Its fitness is computed from the results of simulat-
ing the application of the sequence to the power system. The
DS results used as inputs by the evaluation function are the
following (these values are obtained during the simulation of
a complete sequence):
• unstab: this flag is true if the unstable state has been
encountered.
• N fre: number of times the frequency went out of the
transient limits (62% of f nom).
• N ldf: total number of load flows.
• N div: number of load flows that did not converge.
• N loa: number of overloaded lines and transformers.
• N vol: number of buses with voltage limit violations (both
N loa and N vol can be greater than N ldf, since several over-
loads and voltage violations can be found in a single load
flow).
• I freþ: integral of those parts of the frequency that are above
its upper steady state limit (50.5 Hz)
• I fre¹: integral of those parts of the frequency that are below
its lower steady state limit (49.8 Hz)
• I fre: total integral of absolute frequency deviation with
respect to 50 Hz
A first test is performed to reject a sequence if significant
violations are found:
[unstab ¼ true] OR [Nfre . 0] OR [Ndiv . 0]
OR [Nvol . Nldf ] OR [Nloa . Nldf ] ⇒ fitness ¼ 0 ð1Þ
Otherwise, the fitness is computed as:
Load
fitness ¼ Fstat 3 Fdyn 3 (2)
10
where
(A 3 Nvol þ B 3 Nloa )
Fstat ¼ 1 ¹ , AþB¼1 (3)
Nidf
Ifre þ þ Ifre ¹
Fdyn ¼ 1 ¹
Ifre
Load being the percentage of the pre-blackout load that has
been picked up, and A and B representing the penalty factors
with respect to voltage limit violations or overloads. In this
work, A ¼ 0.5, B ¼ 0.5.
F stat and F dyn can vary from 0 to 1, and Load from 0 to
100%. The factor ten is introduced for the sake of readability
during simulations. Therefore, the maximal possible fitness
is ten, corresponding to the case where there are no voltage,
load and frequency violations, and the total load is restored.
The load restoration time is not considered: it has been
noticed that, for similar power system states, all the opti-
mized LR sequences have quite similar duration.
IV.3 Strategy and operators
The strategy applied is reproduction without duplicates.
In addition, a certain number (E ¼ 2) of best ranked
individuals are kept and copied in the next generation
(elitism). All the remaining individuals are replaced with
children created by using the genetic operators: selection,
crossover and mutation. The selection operator used here is
the standard roulette wheel operator (see reference [2]).
The crossover operator is the two-point crossover with
variable length of the individual. For each parent (see
Figure 3), two points are chosen, elements between the two
points (e 1 for p 1 and e 2 for p 2) are exchanged to obtain two
children. This kind of crossover keeps a certain level of
redundancy in the elements of the individuals (LR actions),
needed to increase the likelihood of obtaining a successful
sequence. However, the maximal length of the individual is
defined and limited by the evaluation function.
The mutation operator replaces a single element of a child
with a randomly chosen element from the list of possible
actions (see Section IV.1).
When two children are created, their fitness values are
computed. The children are copied in the next generation
only if their fitness values are greater than zero. Otherwise,
another couple of parents is selected and crossed over, and
their children evaluated.
V. Results of the GA-optimization
A large number of optimizations have been carried out to
adjust the GA parameters as follows:
Figure 3. Two-point crossover with variable length
of the individual
 Load restoration strategies: T. Kostic et al.
• The number of individuals in a generation is 30.
• The maximal length of an individual is 500.
• The probability of crossover, P c, is set to one.
• The mutation probability P m is a function of the present
generation gen and the maximal number of generations
MaxGen:
gen
¹4
Pm ¼ 0:1 þ 0:4e MaxGen (4)
• A nearly maximum value of the fitness (10 . fitness .
threshold) is usually reached during the first 5–15 gen-
erations, except for certain initial states (near operating
limits). Therefore, the maximum number of generations is
fixed at 20.
• The optimization process is stopped if the fitness is greater
than a threshold (9.5) and if it has not changed by more
than 0.05 during three generations.
V.1 Test power system
Tests have been executed on the EPRI New England system:
39 buses (with 19 load buses), ten generators (three hydraulic,
seven thermal, total installed capacity is 7860 MW), 35
lines, 11 transformers and a total load of 6150 MW. It must
be pointed out that service restoration plans are frequently
prepared at regional level, involving power systems of a
similar size.
V.2 Results
A single run of the optimization, with the above defined
parameters but without the stop criterion, is shown in
Figure 4. The evolution of the frequency when the optimized
sequence is executed is depicted in Figure 5.
The duration of the optimization process is about 1 h
(although it strongly depends on the state of the power
system). The simulation of an LR sequence by the DS
takes about 5 s. The experiments have been carried out on
an HP 735/125 workstation.
V.3 Conclusions
After many runs of the GA it has been observed that, given
the random nature of the GA, different equally acceptable
Figure 4. Evolution of the fitness value for a GA-
based optimization. There are 30 LR sequences in
each generation. The stop criteria is the maximal
number of generations
135
Figure 5. Evolution of the frequency during the
application of an optimized load restoration
sequence
sequences can be obtained for the same power system state.
The generated optimal sequences have been analyzed and
compared, and it has been concluded that it is almost
impossible to deduce generic rules that could describe the
strategy for the second restoration stage (i.e. load pickup) for
the sequences as they are defined at present. In addition,
since rules cannot be extracted, it is impossible to give any
explanation about the order of actions in the sequence, even
when the sequence leads to a satisfactory result. To over-
come this problem, the following sections propose a method
to classify the optimized sequences, generated by the GA,
according to different power system variables to obtain a
decision tree.
VI. Decision trees
The procedures described in the previous sections can be
used to generate a set of power system states (defined by
variables such as loads, availability of generators and lines,
etc., that will be called attributes), with their associated LR
sequences (that will be called classes). Provided that this set
is statistically representative of the space of possible power
system conditions, an induction procedure (such as an
algorithm for decision tree generation) can be used to
identify which attributes of the power system state (i.e.
which of the variables) are relevant to the classification
(i.e. to the selection of an LR sequence).
VI.1 Overview of decision trees
A decision tree (DT) is a set of ordered tests that, when
performed on the attributes of a new item, allow one to
assign a class to it. Reference [6] provides an excellent
survey of decision trees and other machine learning techni-
ques. The application of this technique to security assess-
ment is described in [6,7]. There has also been some work on
the application of DTs to learning sequences of events in
network operation [8].
The core of the decision tree approach is the organization
of the attributes in a tree structure in which the more relevant
an attribute is, the closest to the root it is placed; the tree will
be used to determine which attributes must be checked to
classify a new situation.
136 Load restoration strategies: T. Kostic et al.
Figure 6. Generation of a decision tree
The construction of a DT is based on determining which is
the more relevant attribute for the classification process.
The process starts with an initial training set where there is a
mixture of items belonging to different classes (i.e. the
power system states with different associated sequences).
The relevance of an attribute is related to its capacity to
purify this set, i.e. to separate examples belonging to
different classes (therefore, the relevant attributes are also
called separators). An example of a separator could be
[TotalLoad , 6000 MW]. This separator would split the set
of examples into two subsets: one for heavily loaded pre-
blackout conditions and the other for lightly loaded situa-
tions.
A DT can be seen as a procedure to split the initial set of
examples (a mixture of individuals belonging to different
classes) into subsets of increasing purity.
The most widely used procedure for the construction of
decision trees is the following (see Figure 6):
(1) The initial set of examples is associated to a node (root
node).
(2) A node must be expanded unless it is a leaf node (it has
an admissible purity grade or is not considered to be
statistically significant).
(3) The best separator is selected and applied to separate
the set of examples associated to the node, into two or
more new nodes, which will be eventually expanded.
The purity of the subsets that result from each split is the
criterion to select a separator. The purity can be eval-
uated using different measures, that will be introduced in
Section VI.2. Usually, there exist different possible
separators for a set.
(4) Steps 2 and 3 are repeated until all nodes have been
expanded.
A set of different examples (known as the test set) must be
created to evaluate the quality of the DT (i.e. its ability to
correctly classify ‘‘new’’ examples, that have not been
considered during the tree generation). The application of
the tree consists in carrying out the requested tests on the
attribute values according to the order stated in the tree, until
a leaf is reached. The leaf will have an associated class (LR
sequence).
VI.2 Decision tree construction procedures
Three procedures for DT generation have been used in this
work [9]. The main difference between them is the measure
used to select the most relevant attribute.
All of them keep on expanding nodes until a given purity
threshold is reached. Ideally, the process of selecting
adequate attributes and splitting nodes should continue
until, for every leaf of the tree, all the examples belong to
the same class. Nevertheless, in most realistic applications,
this approach would lead to enormous trees with a few
examples in each leaf and poor performance. This phenom-
enon is similar to the overfitting problem that is found
whenever a polynomial of an excessive degree is used for
curve fitting. Therefore a stop criterion or termination
condition must be used to decide whether decomposing a
node is worthwhile.
• The ID3 algorithm [10] uses entropy as a measurement of
the impurity I(N) of a node N:
X n n
Ni
I(N) ¼ ¹ log Ni (5)
i ¼ 1, M n N nN
where M is the number of classes, n Ni is the number of
elements of N belonging to class i, and n N is the total
number of elements of N. The separator that provides
the maximum decrease of impurity will be selected. The
decrease of impurity provided by a separator S will be
computed as:
X nNj
DI(N, S) ¼ I(N) ¹ I(Nj) (6)
j ¼ 1, H nN
where the separator S splits the set N into subsets
N1,...,Nj,...,NH.
The stop criterion that has been used in the ID3 imple-
mentations is the comparison of the percentage of the most
numerous class with a threshold.
• The ULg method [6,7] defines a normalized version of the
purity increment equation (5):
2DI(N, S)
DI9(N, S) ¼ X nNj nNj (7)
I(N) ¹ log
j ¼ 1, NH nN nN
The ULg method makes use of two stop criteria. The first
one is a threshold value for the entropy I(N). Besides, it
uses a statistical test (x 2) to decide whether the expansion
of a node is expected to increase the tree reliability. The
test is controlled by the a parameter, that measures the
probability of expanding a non-significant node. Low
values of a will provide very cautious expansion proce-
dures and simpler trees, while high values will lead to
more complex trees, where more nodes will be expanded.
• The Fayyad algorithm [11] uses a different family of
measures, aiming at selecting separators that are able to
isolate a class as early as possible during the tree con-
struction. It has been implemented with the same termina-
tion condition used by ID3.
VII. Application of decision trees to load
restoration
As stated in Section V.3, many different sequences for
picking up load, leading to equally acceptable results
(since they have high fitness values), can be obtained for
the same pre-blackout conditions. This high number of
different, good solutions makes the direct application of
 Load restoration strategies: T. Kostic et al.
Figure 7. The use of the GA-optimization and the
dynamic simulator in the generation of the training
set
the learning algorithm impossible, since it could be dealing
with as many different classes as examples.
Regarding now a single LR sequence, it has been con-
cluded that the sequence might be adequate for several
power system states, thanks to redundancy of the actions it
contains (see Section IV.1). For instance, an action (e.g. pick
up 50 MW more of a load) which is invalid for one power
system state (lightly loaded) may be valid for another one
(heavily loaded).
The fact that the same LR sequence can be associated to
different power system states is the basis of the procedure
which generates the training set.
VII.1 Generation of the training set
Different LR sequences can be proved adequate for the same
power system state. Moreover, the GA-based optimization
procedure does not guarantee the generation of all the
adequate sequences, but only a few of them. Nevertheless,
a sequence obtained for a given power system state could be
appropriate for another condition of the power system. This
fact is the basis of the training set generation procedure.
The approach tries to minimize the number of executions
of the GA-based optimization (since it is the most time
consuming task), while ensuring a maximum coverage of the
space of power system states. This goal is achieved as
follows (see Figure 7):
(1) A power system state is randomly selected. The GA-
optimization generates an LR sequence, that is included
in a list of adequate sequences.
137
(2) A new power system state is randomly chosen. All
sequences in the list of adequate sequences are tested
on this new state, and the resulting fitness values are
computed.
(3) If none of the sequences provide a high enough fitness,
the GA is applied to the power system state. The
obtained sequence is added to the list of adequate
sequences. If the GA-optimization is not able to return
a solution, it will be assumed that the power system state
is out of the operation region that has been considered of
interest.
(4) Steps 2 and 3 are repeated until the list of adequate
sequences includes enough sequences to (roughly)
cover all the feasible states of the power system. This
condition holds when
of new sequences found in last N cycles
,e (8)
N
(5) A new power system state is randomly chosen. All the
sequences in the list of adequate sequences are tested
on this new state, and the resulting fitness values are
computed.
(6) If any of the sequences provides a fitness greater than a
given threshold, it is selected as an adequate solution for
the new state of the power system. The variables defin-
ing the power system state and the sequence are added to
the training set.
(7) Steps 5 and 6 are repeated until the desired number of
elements in the training set is reached.
The purpose of this procedure is to identify regions in the
space of power system states in which the same LR sequence
is adequate. These regions should be as big as possible, to
minimize the number of different sequences to be used in the
learning procedure.
The power system states are defined in terms of a set of
variables: availability of generators, lines and transformers
(in the network skeleton), pre-blackout load at each bus and
total pre-blackout load.
The population of power system states will be randomly
generated. Each of the variables will have an associated
distribution probability. Nevertheless, the use of actual
probabilities would lead to an insufficient presence of
‘‘critical’’ power system states (those with unavailable
generators, since these problems have low probability of
occurring) in the training set, and would decrease the ability
of the DT to treat such situations. Thus, the used probabilities
must ensure that an adequate coverage of the ‘‘critical’’
states is provided.
VII.2 Validation of the decision tree
The validation of the DT must be carried out using a second
set of power system states, the test set, that is not used for
training purposes (Figure 8):
• For each example in the test set the DT is used to
determine a sequence for picking up load.
• The fitness value corresponding to each power system
state and its associated sequence is computed, using the
dynamic simulator.
• If the fitness value is greater than a given threshold, the
classification is successful.
• The percentage of successful classifications provides a
measure of the quality of the decision tree.
It must be noticed that this validation approach is slightly
138 Load restoration strategies: T. Kostic et al.

appropriate sequence for each power system state). Never-

theless, since in this problem many different classes
(sequences) are roughly equally appropriate, the previous
class assignment makes no sense: its results would probably
never agree with the output of the DT. The only valid method
is based on analyzing the DT results using the same evalua-
tion function (the dynamic simulator) that was used to
generate the examples.
The results of the testing process can be used to adjust
several parameters:
• The number of elements in the training set.
• The fitness thresholds beyond which a given sequence is
considered to be acceptable.
• The procedure for decision tree construction and its
associated parameters (end node purity, a, etc.).

Figure 8. The validation of the decision tree is
based on analyzing its outcome with the dynamic
simulator
different from the one usually reported in the literature. In
the usual approach, the validation consists of comparing the
DT results with a previous classification of the test set
elements. This approach is possible when there is only one
possible class for each element in the test set (i.e. only one
VIII. Results
The GA–DT approach has been tested on the EPRI New
England network (see Section V.1):
• 1000 power system states were analyzed. Total pre-black-
out loads were between 5280 and 7050 MW. The unavail-
ability of two units was simulated. Circuit unavailability
was not considered. The e parameter (see equation (8) in
Section VII.1) was equal to 0.03. 19 adequate LR
sequences were found.
• Since most of the power system states have more than one
associated sequence, the training set has 7181 elements.

Table 1. Comparison of several DTs

Algorithm ID3 ULg a ¼ 0.0005 ULg a ¼ 0.04 Fayyad
Purity threshold 20% 0.6 0.6 20%
Number of nodes 1313 53 119 1595
Fitness [ [0] 2.90% 0.00% 0.00% 2.60%
Fitness [ [3,8] 1.00% 0.00% 0.40% 3.30%
Fitness [ [8,9] 6.50% 3.40% 3.80% 7.50%
Fitness [ [9,10] 89.60% 96.60% 95.80% 86.60%

Figure 9. This DT has been created using the ULg algorithm, with a ¼ 0.0005 and an entropy threshold of 4.0.
The size of each node corresponds to the number of associated elements of the training set. The shading of a
node corresponds to its associated LR sequences (0, 1,...,18). Separators (section 6.1) are shown under their
nodes (g9 is the availability of unit nine). The numbers close to each node (2294, 4887, etc.) are the numbers of
associated training set examples. ND:2 and ND:3 are node identifiers
 Load restoration strategies: T. Kostic et al.
• The test set included 1000 elements.
VIII.1 Validation of the trees
The three decision tree construction algorithms described in
Section VI.2 were used. All of them provided results of
similar quality: the ID3 and ULg trees were quite similar
(since both algorithms use similar criteria for attribute
selection); Fayyad gives completely different trees, since it
is based on a different approach.
The number of nodes is a measure of the complexity of the
DT. Both ID3 and Fayyad are very sensitive to changes in the
threshold that is used as stop condition; for instance, ID3
trees can range between 3 and 1313 nodes for a small
variation of the threshold (between 11 and 20%) with a
significant deterioration in performance for trees that are too
small or too large. On the other hand, ULg (because of its
additional termination condition) consistently provides trees
with a smaller size, tipically between 40 and 70 nodes.
Table 1 shows the main characteristics of some decision
trees that have been obtained. The table also presents the
fitness distribution of the LR sequences suggested by the DT
for the elements of the test set. The purity measure used as a
stop condition has been implemented in different ways for
each algorithm: for ULg, the entropy is used, while for ID3
and Fayyad a simplified purity measure (defined as the
percentage of the most numerous class) has been selected.
Figure 9 shows an example of decision tree.
VIII.2 Analysis of results
More detailed results are presented in [9]. Several conclu-
sions can be drawn from the analysis of the experiments
carried out so far:
• A small number of LR sequences cover a wide region of
power system states.
• A relatively small training set provides a satisfactory
accuracy.
• However, the problem is too complex for a single attribute
to be sufficient to select the appropriate sequence. For
instance, see the frequency distribution of LR sequences
for two different availability states of unit nine (Figure
10): although this is the most important attribute for ID3
and ULg, it is not sufficient for selecting a sequence.
• The DTs provide useful criteria: for the best obtained
decision tree, 96.70% of its suggestions have a fitness
beyond nine, while 100% of the solutions have a fitness
beyond eight. On the other hand, the random selection of a
sequence for each power system state gives only 64% of
results beyond fitness nine, and 9.5% of results with
fitness 0.
Figure 10. Frequency distribution of LR sequences
for two availability states of g9
139
Figure 11. The use of the decision tree in a realistic
load restoration environment
IX. Conclusions
The first tests confirm the potential applicability of this
approach to the selection of LR sequences. Decision trees
constructed with training sets of reasonable size are able to
select high quality load restoration sequences for a wide
range of power system states. However, these preliminary
results are to be confirmed with more extensive analysis,
involving the complete simulation of unit and circuit una-
vailability.
IX.1 Possible use in a real environment
The DT would be constructed and tested off-line, using
real data from the power system. It should be updated
whenever a significant change occurs in the topology,
installed capacity or load profile. When a blackout occurs,
the decision tree should use the available data to select an
LR sequence.
The sequence is used to propose actions to the operator.
Before suggesting each operation, a final verification is
performed using the available data and the DS (Figure 11).
The application of the sequence is modified according to the
results of the verification. For instance, if the simulation of a
‘‘connect load’’ operation results in an unacceptably low
value of the frequency (because some load has been
unexpectedly connected), the operation is delayed. The
first ‘‘change generator set-point’’ in the sequence is imme-
diately suggested instead of the ‘‘connect load’’ manoeuvre.
These tests are intended to ensure that unexpected changes in
the power system conditions are taken into account, and the
selected sequences are not blindly applied.
IX.2 Further work
The application of this approach requires additional research
in several principal directions, such as:
• The fitness function must be improved, to capture actual
operators’ criteria.
• The decision tree must be updated to deal with the
continuous evolution of the power system (new com-
ponents added, new generators and loads, etc.).
• The LR selection criteria can be arranged in a hierarchy of
DTs, to deal with more complex power systems without
building a single, huge tree.
140 Load restoration strategies: T. Kostic et al.
X. Acknowledgements
The authors want to express their thanks to Rachid
Cherkaoui, for his extensive support in the development
and testing of the simulator, as well as to Eugenio Sánchez,
who developed the software for decision tree construction
and assisted in its use. This work has been supported by
the Swiss National Foundation for Energy Research (NEFF),
Électricité de France (EDF–DER) and the Electric Energy
Systems UETP.
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