Enabling client-server explanation facilities in a real-time expert system

Although expert systems have been increasingly applied for solving power system problems in the past decade, their capabilities have nit been fully used. Their ability to provide explanations concerning their knowledge and inference process is one good example of misuse of expert system possibilities. In the case of expert systems designed for real-time operation, the introduction of effective explanation features poses important constraints that must be taken into account. This paper presents an explanation mechanism that has been designed and implemented to be used by SPARSE, an expert system for intelligent alarm processing and power restoration ais which is running on-line in a Portuguese transmission control center.