Design and Deployment of a Multi-Agent System on a Hardware Prototype

In this paper, a design and deployment of a Multi-Agent System (MAS) for a power system reconfiguration, restoration and load shedding is realized. The designed MAS is based on the human Immune System (IS) behavior in which different cells interact in order to heal the body. The proposed MAS is able to detect and isolate faults, reconfigure and restore power to the healthy loads and perform load shedding when necessary. The MAS system is implemented in microcontroller hardware and deployed on a power system testbed. The prototype is based on a shipboard power system and it is built for real time testing and development of Multi-agent systems. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed MAS is very effective and promising in solving complex problems in power systems in general and specifically shipboard power systems.