Electric Power Components and Systems

ISSN: 1532-5008 (Print) 1532-5016 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uemp20

Current Status of Petri Nets Theory in Power

Systems

MA JID JAMIL

To cite this article: MAJID JAMIL (2004) Current Status of Petri Nets Theory in Power Systems,
Electric Power Components and Systems, 33:3, 263-276, DOI: 10.1080/15325000590474384

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15325000590474384

Published online: 16 Aug 2006.

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 EMP 33(3) #19703

Electric Power Components and Systems, 33:263–276, 2005

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Inc.
ISSN: 1532-5008 print/1532-5016 online
DOI: 10.1080/15325000590474384

Current Status of Petri Nets Theory in

Power Systems

MAJID JAMIL
Department of Electrical Engineering
Jamia Millia Islamia University
New Delhi, India
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For the last two decades increasing attention has been given to Petri net’s applica-
tions for the representation and analysis of large, complex, distributed, stochastic and
discrete-event systems like flexible manufacturing, industrial control systems, com-
munication protocol, distributed-software systems, distributed-database system, mul-
tiprocessor memory systems, data flow computing systems, fault-tolerant systems, and
computer industries. Since power system is a large geographically wide distributed
system, in the recent past, application of Petri net’s theory in power systems have
also been reported. This article presents literature survey of recent papers published
in the area of power systems using Petri nets. Basics of Petri net’s theory and its
different forms applicable to power systems are also discussed. A method of detecting
type of faults on three phase transmission line by using Petri net theory is discussed
in details. Different examples based on Petri nets shows that such methodology is
more efficient than the traditional approaches especially when the complexity of the
problem increases.

Keywords fault detection, Petri nets, phase sequence, power systems

1. Introduction
In recent years, many interesting applications of Petri nets have been reported in power
systems, such as power system planning, sequence switching and design of computer-
aided substation, power protection, substation control, security assessment and power
quality. Petri nets have attracted much attention due to their graphical and mathematical
modeling capabilities to concurrent, asynchronous, distributed, parallel, non-determin-
istic, stochastic and discrete-event systems. Since power system is a large, complex,
geographically wide distributed system comprising of generating stations, transmission
lines, distribution systems and loads, Petri nets have been proved to be an effective tool
for such complex system. Petri nets provide an environment for the analysis, modeling
and design of complex discrete event systems.
Historically speaking, the concept of the Petri net has its origin in Carl Adam
Petri nets dissertation [1] submitted in 1962 at University of Darmstadt, West Germany.
C. A. Petri addressed in his dissertation the problem of representing co-operating, con-
current, or competing processes by a graphical modeling formalism subsequently referred

Manuscript received in final form on 12 March 2004.

Address correspondence to Dr. Majid Jamil, c/o Jamil Ahmad, Advocate, Quazi Street,
Saharanpur, U.P., 247001, India. E-mail: majidjamil@hotmail.com

263
 264 M. Jamil

to as Petri nets. Since then, Petri nets have been proposed for a very wide variety of
applications. This is due to the generality and permissiveness inherent in Petri nets. They
can be applied informally to any area or system that can be described graphically, like
flow charts, and that needs some means of representing parallel or concurrent activities.
However, careful attention must be paid to a trade off between modeling generality and
analysis capability. That is, the more general the model, the less amenable it is to analy-
sis. The use of computer aided tools is a necessity for practical applications of Petri nets.
Most Petri net research groups have their own software packages and tools to assist the
drawing, analysis, and/or simulation of various applications.
The application of Petri nets to power systems may be traced back a decade. Since
the introduction of computer-based automatic control in substations [2], there have been
research reports regarding the Petri net’s application on power system. With complex
configuration and more diversified designs of the power system, the engineer may be
concerned whether the design satisfies the requirements of the system safety operation
and optimal designs as well as how to evaluate its dynamic performance. Because of
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interconnection of elements, a large variety of dynamic interactions are possible, some

of which will only affect some of the elements, and others will affect the fragment of the
system, whilst others may affect the system as a whole. As each dynamic effect displays
certain unique features, power system dynamics can be conveniently divided into groups
characterized by their cause, consequence, time frame, physical character or the place
in the system that they occur. The simultaneous multiple event problems are efficiently
solved by parallel like reasoning with Petri nets. Heuristic rules and evaluation functions
can also be searched with it [3]. In this approach, the structures and the functions of the
systems are modeled. The conditions are simulated and diagnoses are made by comparing
information. The modeling of a system by means of Petri net’s formalism presents a set
of advantages such as system modeling and dynamic performance analysis are made
easier even for complex systems.
In this article, a possible overview of Petri net applications in different fields of power
systems are presented. This article is organized in six sections. In Section 2, basics of
Petri net theory are presented; properties of Petri nets are discussed in Section 3. In
Section 4, we presented the possible areas in which Petri net’s theory is applied by the
researchers. In the same section limitations of Petri nets are also described. Section 5
presents the applications of Petri net’s theory to power system. In the last section, a
method for fault classification on three phase transmission line based on Petri net theory
is proposed.

2. Basics of Petri Net’s Theory

Petri nets are a graphical and mathematical modeling tool. As a graphical tool, it can be
used as a flow chart, block diagram, and network. As a mathematical tool, it is possible to
set up state equations, algebraic equations, and other mathematical models governing the
behavior of the system. It is a mathematical formalism and finds use in simple objects,
relations and rules. Petri nets can be used by both practitioners and theoreticians. Thus,
they provide a powerful medium of communication between them, and practitioners can
learn from theoreticians how to make their models more methodical; theoreticians can
learn from practitioners how to make their models more realistic.
A Petri net is defined as directed bipartite graph having a structure and a marking.
The structure has four components: a set of places, a set of transitions, a set of input
arcs that connect places to transitions and a set of output arcs that connect transitions to
 Petri Nets in Power Systems 265
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Figure 1. Petri net graph.

places. The four structural features define the topology of the net. Each of these concepts
has a graphical representation. Places are represented by circles, the transitions by bars,
and the input and output mapping by a set of directed arcs. The topological information of
each Petri net graph is contained in its incidence matrix which has rows and columns [4].
An ordinary Petri net graph is shown in Figure 1. The marking is a way of representing
the current state of the net, where the state of the net defines which places are active;
graphically it is symbolized by tokens put at one or more places. Changes in the marking
of a Petri net define its dynamics or changes in state over time. A marking changes
when token moves from one place to another place. This is done by firing a transition.
A transition may fire when it is enabled. A transition is enabled when there are tokens
in all of its input places. When the transition fires, it removes a token from each of
its input places and adds a token to each of its output places. A transition without any
input place is called a source transition, and one without any output place is called a
sink transition. A pair of place and transition is called self-loop. A Petri net is said to
be pure if it has no self-loop and it is ordinary if all of its arc weights are 1’s. In Petri
net’s theory, two activities are said to be concurrent if they are casually independent,
i.e., one activity may take place before, after, or in parallel with the other. Since their
inception, there have been scores of variations on the initial structure of Petri nets, but
most of these variations are simply additions to the basic definition of a Petri net. Petri
net’s theory may be described in several forms. Time Petri net models are used for real
time system specification and verification. In time Petri nets event synchronization is
represented in terms of set of pre- and post-conditions associated with each individual
action of the modeled system, and timing constraints are expressed in terms of minimum
and maximum amount of time elapsing between the enabling and the execution of each
action. This allows a compact representation of the state space and explicit modeling of
concurrency and parallelism [5].
To study performance and dependability issues of systems it is necessary to include
a timing concept into the model. There are several possibilities to do this for a Petri net;
 266 M. Jamil

however, the most common way is to associate a firing delay with each transition. This
delay specifies the time that the transition has to be enabled before it can actually fire.
If the delay is a random distribution function, the resulting net class is called stochastic
Petri net. Different types of transitions can be distinguished depending on their associated
delay; for instance immediate transitions (no delay), exponential transitions (delay is an
exponential distribution), and deterministic transitions (delay is fixed). In timed Petri
nets a single time parameter is associated with each place. In a timed Petri net model
whenever a token is deposited in a place it remains inactive in this place for a specified
interval, at the end of which it becomes available [5]. Colored Petri net, one other
form of Petri net, allows system designers and analysts to move the often difficult and
sometimes impossible task of working directly with real systems into the more tractable
and inexpensive realm of computerized modeling, simulations and analysis. Such a move
solves many problems but it does not solve them all. A model of complex system may
itself be complex. Methods for dealing with this complexity are required in order for
the model to be created and used effectively. A colored Petri net provides an extremely
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effective dynamic modeling paradigm. It is a graphical structure with associated computer

language statements. The colored Petri nets are an important extension to ordinary Petri
nets providing for elegant models with a higher level of abstraction and an improved
graphical representation capability. A colored Petri net reduces the size of the net.
The fields of rule-based systems and reasoning also received attention from Petri net
researchers. Since Petri nets provide a model for the logic of knowledge and the control
of inference, this formal tool has also been employed for studying and implementing
rule-based expert systems. Introduction of fuzzy logic and neural network and their fur-
ther applications in a number of industrial processes addressed some research toward the
application of the Petri net model as a support for describing fuzzy and neural systems.
Although other representation models, both numerical and graphical, have been proposed
for fuzzy systems, the high capability for representation and modeling of concurrent sys-
tems that Petri nets exhibit make them an attractive tool for fuzzy representation. This is
a very new research field but it has quickly become an intense and promising research
domain. Because Petri nets are an easy-to-understand graphical model that includes dy-
namic representation capabilities, they seem to be adequate for modeling fuzzy rule-based
systems and, in general, process where fuzzy sets or logics are involved. Since knowledge
in expert systems is vague and modified frequently; expert systems are fuzzy and dy-
namic systems. It is very important to design a dynamic knowledge inference framework
that is adjustable according to knowledge variation as human cognition and thinking.
Aiming at this object, a fuzzy Petri net model is proposed in [6] which is called adaptive
fuzzy Petri net. It is suitable for dynamic knowledge, i.e., the weights of adaptive fuzzy
Petri nets are adjustable. Artificial neural networks are highly parallel and distributed
computational structures that can learn from experience and perform inferences. On the
other hand, Petri nets provide an effective modeling framework for distributed systems.
The basic concept of Petri nets can be utilized to develop ANN like multilayered Petri
net architectures of distributed intelligence having learning ability. The Petri net model
NPN (neural Petri nets) has practical importance since it uses discrete synaptic weights
rather than varying synaptic weights. The greatest advantage of NPN is that the memory
requirement is reduced and the computations greatly simplified. Fuzzy neural Petri nets
(FNPN) is another very new form of Petri nets that can be used for representing a fuzzy
knowledge base and for fuzzy reasoning [7]. Fuzzy timing Petri net is another class of
Petri net that is useful in studying real time behavior, network effects and performance
of networked virtual environment. A case study and examples of virtual environment are
presented in [8].
 Petri Nets in Power Systems 267

3. Properties of Petri Nets

Once a Petri net graph has been drawn, it is important to analyze the net to determine
what sort of properties it has for a particular application. The first step of analysis
usually consists of forming a reachability tree. The reachability tree begins with the initial
marking. From this marking, a new marking is created for each enabled transition from
that marking. Once all possible markings have been found, the tree is complete. Once the
reachability tree is constructed, the tree can be analyzed in order to determine specific
properties of the Petri net. Some of the more important properties that can be determined
include safeness, boundedness, liveness, and conservativeness. The property of safeness
can be determined for both individual places and for the entire net. A place is said to
be safe if, for all possible markings, the number of tokens in that place never exceeds
one. The Petri net is declared safe if all of the places in the net are safe. The property of
boundedness can also be determined for individual places and for the entire Petri net. The
boundedness property is actual a more general form of the safeness property. A place is
said to be k-bounded if, for all possible markings, the number of tokens in that place never
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exceeds k. A Petri net is k-bounded if, for all possible markings, the number of tokens
in any individual place in the net never exceeds k. Both the safe and bound properties
for Petri nets are important in the field of engineering because they help determine what
size buffers, counters, etc. are needed in order to implement the design. For instance,
if all of the places are safe, it would be possible to implement these conditions with a
boolean variable. If a place is representative of a buffer, and is 16-bounded, then the
designer knows to use a buffer of size 16. The third property, liveness, is one of the
most important properties of the Petri net for most applications. The liveness property
encapsulates the concept of a system that will be able to run continuously, i.e., a system
that does not deadlock, that is an important property when modeling operating systems,
communication protocols, computer programs, and just about any safety critical system.
Using the most general definition of liveness, a Petri net is considered live if, for all
possible markings, there is always a transition enabled. There have been, however, many
other concepts developed in the area of liveness, some of which define different levels
of liveness for individual transitions. The last property, conservativeness, is associated
with the total number of tokens within the Petri net. A Petri net is said to be strictly
conservative if, for all possible markings, the total number of tokens in the Petri net
always remains constant. A Petri net can also be conservative with respect to a particular
weighting vector that can be defined for a Petri net This would allow, for instance, the
total number of tokens to increase by some number for certain markings, as long as they
were reduced by that same number at a later marking. A number of software tools are
available to verify the properties of Petri nets. Majority of the tools for Petri net design
are currently run on UNIX platforms, with few that are targeted for the PC platforms.
Most of these tools do include graphical editors and tools do provide analysis of the
reachability tree, some of which address the properties of liveness and boundedness [9].
Other tools have analysis functionality geared toward either statistic, such as the number
of times a transition fires, the average number of tokens in a place, etc. Others are geared
toward analyzing the timing of transition firing and other events [10].

4. Applications of Petri Nets

Petri nets have been accepted as a powerful formal specification tool for a variety
of systems including concurrent, distributed, asynchronous, parallel, deterministic and
non-deterministic. Petri nets also have applications in a number of different disciplines
 268 M. Jamil

including engineering, manufacturing, business, chemistry, mathematics, and even within

the judicial system. Successful applications areas are performance evaluation and com-
munication protocols. Promising areas of applications include modeling and analysis of
distributed systems, distributed-database system, concurrent and parallel programs, flex-
ible manufacturing, industrial control systems, discrete event systems, multiprocessor
memory systems, data flow computing systems, fault-tolerant systems, programmable
logic and VLSI array, asynchronous circuits and structures, compiler and operating sys-
tems, office information systems, formal languages, and logic programs. Other interesting
applications considered in the literature are in the local area networks, human factors,
neural networks, digital filters and decision models. Initially, Petri nets were developed
for the modeling of computer systems and communication protocols. Such systems are
discrete event systems. In such systems, the state remains unchanged, until an event
takes place, thereby causing system to instantaneously switch to different states. Petri net
approach can be easily combined with other techniques and theories such as object ori-
ented programming, fuzzy logic, neural network, genetic algorithm etc. These modified
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Petri nets are widely used in computer manufacturing; robotic knowledge based systems,
process control, power systems as well as other kind of engineering applications.

Limitations of Petri Nets

Petri nets can be applied informally to a system that can be described graphically like
flow charts and that needs some means of representing parallel or concurrent activities.
However, careful attention must be paid to trade off between modeling generality and
analysis capability. In fact, a major weakness of Petri nets is the complexity problem,
i.e., Petri net based models tend to become too large for analysis even for a modest-
size system. In applying Petri nets, it is often necessary to add special modifications or
restrictions suited to the particular application.

5. Objectives of Petri Nets Applications to Power Systems

• To represent and analyze power system.
• To guarantee secure concurrent operations.
• To model and carry out the performance evaluation of the protection scheme.
• To study the stochastic nature of power system and the dynamic analysis of power
system.
• To study the integrated system, computer aided verification, and security improve-
ment.
• To diagnose the operating behavior of the component of the scheme under faulty
conditions.
• To model automatic control functions in transmission substations and functionally
integrated systems.
• To study real time feasibility of the functionally integrated automatic control for
distribution system.

Applications of Petri Nets in Power Systems

For the last two decades many interesting applications of artificial intelligence (AI) have
been applied in power systems. The current interest in the development of AI is largely
due to their brain-like organizational structure and learning ability. In the area of artificial
 Petri Nets in Power Systems 269

intelligence, the application of Petri nets may be traced back to a decade. Conventional
power system planning, operation, control and management are based on strict math-
ematical models to find solutions; however, power systems have many uncertainties in
practice. Namely, those mathematical models provide only specific solution of the power
systems under respective assumptions. With these assumptions, the solutions of power
system problems are not trivial. Therefore there exist some limitations for the mathemat-
ical based schemes. In order to overcome these limitations, application of new intelligent
technologies, such as Petri nets, fuzzy systems, neural network and genetic algorithm,
have been investigated in different areas of power systems for reliable and high quality
supply at low cost. In addition, recent research works indicate that more emphasis has
been put on the combined usage of these intelligent methods for further improvement in
the area. Because automation has a strong rate in power systems, it is a good field to
apply the features provided by Petri nets to improve reliability. This concept provides a
systematic way to handle the reasoning process, improves reasoning, accuracy and effi-
ciency and exhibits asynchronous concurrent activities. It can be applied to events such
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as contingencies associated with system changes from one state to the other.

Power Generation and Planning

Real time systems such as power plant monitoring are often reactive or embedded con-
trol systems that must constantly react to their environment and among components with
in the systems. Consequently, concurrency, resource sharing synchronization, and dead
lock resolutions are among essential issues in the design and implementation of such
systems. Petri nets, for their ability to model these properties, become a suitable tool for
modeling and analysis of this class of systems. Several extended models of Petri nets like
time Petri nets, timed Petri nets, and stochastic Petri nets have been proved useful for
real time system specification and verification of power plants [11]. The most commonly
used dependability models are the state-space models as generalized stochastic Petri nets
(GSPN). Due to their logical subnets, a complex model results even for simple repairable
systems. Combining the GSPN properties and high level Petri net facilities, a simpli-
fied model, having the same modeling power as GSPN, is built, giving logical explicit
stochastic Petri net (LESPN) architectural modules for parallel, series, and series-parallel
repairable systems. These modules can be used in repairable power systems depend-
ability modeling. A computerized tool, SPNE is created to compute the dependability
metrics. Comparative analysis of the LESPN architectural modules is presented in [12].
The dependability comparative analysis is applied in a ship electric power plant safety
study. Three electrical generators-main switchboard (EG-MS) coupling alternatives, for
the ship electric power plant, are proposed and analyzed.

Power System Dispatch

The concept of Petri nets is introduced in power system dispatch in [13]. A three-zone
example of a power system dispatch model is used to illustrate. A hybrid multilayer Petri
net model for electric power systems is proposed in the article. The base layer is the
physical layer, which represents the physical flow in a power system. On top of base
layer are information layers to model information flows, which schedule the physical
flow via discrete tokens. In between, there is an interface layer coded as programs and
functioning as a control agent. An extension of continuous Petri nets, called a variable
arc weighting Petri net (VAWPN), is introduced to simulate the physical layer in which
 270 M. Jamil

vector tokens are used to match the information flows to the physical flows. The operation
of a variable arc weighting Petri net method in power system dispatch is described in the
paper. A new modeling approach for dependability evaluation and sensitivity analysis of
scheduled maintenance systems (SMSs) based on a deterministic and stochastic Petri net
(DSPN) approach is presented in [14]. The DSPN approach offers significant advantages
in terms of easiness and clearness of modeling with respect to existing Markov chain
based tools, drastically limiting the amount of user assistance needed to define the model.
At the same time, these improved model capabilities do not result in additional computa-
tion costs. Indeed, the evaluation of the DSPN model of SMS is supported by an efficient
and fully automatable analytical solution technique for the time-dependent marking oc-
cupation probabilities. Moreover, the existence of such explicit analytical solutions allow
to obtain the sensitivity functions of the dependability measures with respect to the vari-
ation of the parameter values. These sensitivity functions can be conveniently employed
to analytically evaluate the effects that parameter variations have on the measures of
interest [15].
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Power System Control

The dynamical and structural properties of Petri nets in computer aided integrated control
system have been studied in [16]. A tightly coupled set of automatic switching sequences
has been modeled and verified with Petri nets. In another paper [17], coordination of
automatic control function in transmission substation using Petri nets is presented. In
this study traditional automatic line control in transmission substation is functionally
integrated using Petri nets. Line recloser, under frequency and tie line tripping, under
voltage lines tripping and restoration function are individually designed with Petri nets.
Concurrence between triggering events for these functions has been evaluated. Computer
aided verification is applied to prove the required properties of the integrated control
structure assuring security.

Power Quality
Power quality issues have been extensively studied in recent years because of the prolif-
eration of power electronic devices and non-linear loads, such as computers, switching
power supplies, arc furnaces, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), etc. To ensure
correct operation of the equipment, customers always require the utilities to supply the
electricity with as constant magnitude and frequency as possible. Deregulation and com-
petition of the power industry are now propelling the utilities to operate the system at an
even higher efficiency and reliability. A fuzzy Petri-nets (FPNs) expert system for clas-
sification of the power quality (PQ) problems is proposed in [18]. Based on the wavelet
transform, the proposed expert system detects and localizes in time the transients of the
signals due to various fault events. By calculating related indices to the PQ, the FPNs
inference-module draws possible causes of the disturbances as well as its credibility
values from its knowledge base. Attributed to the FPNs structure, the knowledge expres-
sion and inference process can be achieved systematically and graphically. To verify the
performance of the proposed FPNs expert system, a wide variety of disturbance signals
simulated by the electromagnetic transients program (EMTP) package were employed.
The development and the effectiveness of the proposed system as well as the testing
results are also presented in this article.
 Petri Nets in Power Systems 271

Power System Protection

With complex configuration and more diversified designs of power system, the corre-
sponding design of protective schemes will be complicated. The protection engineer may
be concerned whether the design of a protection scheme satisfies the requirements of
the system safety operation and optimal designs, as well as how to evaluate its dynamic
performance [19]. Although the power system itself is a continuous time system, its pro-
tection scheme may be viewed as a discrete event system, and can be modeled through
Petri nets. The occurrence of a fault is a discrete event that instantaneously changes the
power system from a fault free condition to a faulted condition. Similarly, the clearance
of a fault and the resetting of a relay are discrete events that change the state. A de-
terministic and stochastic Petri net model of protection schemes is presented in [20]. In
order to carry out performance evaluation, marked graphs are presented for qualitative
evaluation. It is discussed that time Petri nets and timed Petri nets are convenient for
cycle time evaluations and for deriving the relationship between the time parameters of
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the primary and second protection. Stochastic Petri nets are used for the modeling of
the stochastic nature of protection as they serve as a means of probabilistic measures
and have advantages over simulation technique. Petri net is applied in detecting fault
location in power networks in [21]. It is discussed that application of Petri net reduces
processing time and increases accuracy, thus methodology is more efficient than that the
traditional approaches, especially when the complexity of the problem increases. Petri net
models for fault diagnosis for substation automation discussed in [22] are the extension
of the work presented in [21]. Here, backup and secondary backup have been included
to improve the overall performance in fault diagnosis. The proposed methodology has
great potential for use in real time and serves the purpose of assisting operators during
emergencies and for substation automation. A user-friendly graphical aid has also been
developed to bring it a step closer for Petri nets for fault diagnosis to be implemented
on-line. A particular kind of Petri nets of fault analysis is proposed in [23]. In this pa-
per, the authors pursued a different approach, i.e., the corrective approach. Even though
the preventive and protective approaches eliminate some faults, the corrective approach
increases the reliability of the system by detecting faults that occur during a specified
operation time interval. In the corrective approach, fault recovery is straight forward. The
authors introduced a particular kind of Petri net, the restricted Petri net (RPN), along
with a set of definitions and theoretical results which enable RPN to be of use in fault
detection processes.
A new Petri nets (PNs) knowledge representation scheme to quickly estimate the
fault section of distribution systems when a fault occurs is proposed in [24]. Based on the
practical guidelines and the heuristic rules obtained by interacting with the dispatchers
of distribution systems, a PNs model is first built to represent the related knowledge
about the task of substation fault diagnosis. The PNs model built is then transformed into
matrix forms, which are relied on to infer the result of fault diagnosis through simple
matrix operations. Due to its graphic representation of the heuristic rules and parallel
rule-firing manner via matrix operations, the human expertise on fault diagnosis can
be advantageously expressed and exploited by means of the PNs knowledge-representing
approach. The system is demonstrated on a practical system of Chung-Hsiao substation at
Tai-Nan City, Taiwan. Flexibility and effectiveness of the PNs model have been validated
for the fault section estimation. A rule-based expert system with a colored Petri net (CPN)
inference model is developed for service restoration of distribution systems in [25]. The
CPN models of distribution components, such as four-way line switches, are proposed to
 272 M. Jamil

drive the proper restoration plan after the faulted location has been identified and isolated.
The un-faulted but out of service areas are restored by applying parallel-like reasoning in
the CPN for multiple contingencies simultaneously. To assure the restoration plan comply
with the operation regulation, heuristic rules based on the standard operation procedures
of Tai-power distribution system are included in the best first search of the CPN. For
the fault contingency during summer peak season, the load shedding is executed and
the CPN models are designed to restore service to as many key customers and loads as
possible. The priority indices of each feeder and service zone are determined according
to the key customers within the service territory. A Tai-power distribution system with
18 feeders is selected for computer simulation to demonstrate the effectiveness of the
proposed methodology. It is found that the service restoration of distribution system
can be obtained very efficiently by applying the proposed CPN model. A Petri net (PN)
algorithm combining with a new restoration approach is implemented in [26] for multiple
distribution contingencies. This approach is performed by releasing some loads required
to maintain the rest system in safe operation in overload cases and opening all of the
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switched in the out-of-service areas for fault cases, and then closing proper switched to
restore the isolated areas. PN switching models and the construction of PN for multiple
contingency operations are proposed to implement the restoration algorithm. Problem
solving is efficiently performed by parallel-like reasoning in the PN for all the multiple
events simultaneously. Heuristic rules and evaluation functions are presented for the best
first search in the PN. Multiple contingencies studied in this article include problems of
feeder fault/overload/ over-unbalance and main transformer fault/overload. A practical
Taiwan power distribution system is simulated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the
proposed method. It is concluded that multiple contingencies of distribution systems can
be solved by the proposed method effectively. Heuristic on-line monitoring expert system
(HOLMES) for fault diagnosis and restoration planning in industrial power systems is
shown in [23]. HOLMES was designed to be installed in the plant control room near the
SCADA system to assist the human operators during emergencies. The main goal is to
locate the fault, beginning from the effects in the whole power system and going back
along the propagation chain. The paper describes the problems that the expert system faces
and the structure designed to find a solution, focusing on its knowledge representation
based on Petri nets [27]. A failure in a power transmission line causes a number of circuit
breakers to activate in an effort to isolate the failure and prevent it from corrupting the rest
of the power system. Based on information from these physically distributed protective
devices, a central controller needs to quickly locate and identify the failure. The task
becomes challenging due to the complexity of modern power transmission networks
and due to the possibility of sensor failures or incorrect operation of protective devices.
A solution to this problem is investigated using Petri net models [28]. The authors’
approach allows concurrent/incremental processing of the information that arrives at the
controller and only requires simple calculations (linear checks) during execution time.
Most reasoning is implicitly performed at design time, which gives their method an
important edge for real-time monitoring. These same techniques can potentially handle
multiple failures or perform hierarchical and/or distributed monitoring. The transmission
protection model proposed in [29] includes three parts; the colored bus-subnet model, the
line protective relay scheme model and the communication line model. The colored Petri
nets are important extensions to ordinary Petri nets, providing for elegant models with a
higher level of abstraction and an improved graphical representation capability, a colored
Petri net reduces the size of the nets. Model for an EHV transmission line protection-
relaying scheme, which includes three kinds of relays and an automatic recloser, is
 Petri Nets in Power Systems 273

presented in [30]. The marked graph and the reachability graph of the modeled system
are presented. By analyzing the properties of the Petri net model, the dynamic behaviors
of the system are modeled and the drawback of the system is detected. In the next part of
this article, a Petri net based protection scheme is described that utilizes the application
of phase sequence in identifying type of fault on transmission line. Since phase sequence
is a potential method for identifying all ten types of fault on transmission line, properties
of Petri nets are therefore utilized to get an efficient scheme.

6. Petri Nets Based Method for Fault Classification

The protection of an overhead transmission line is both interesting and challenging due
to its consequent exposure to lightning and other atmospheric hazards. It is a fact that the
numbers of faults on three-phase transmission lines are much more than other apparatus
used in power system. There are four types of faults on a three-phase transmission line,
i.e., single phase to ground (P-G), phase to phase (PP), two-phase to ground (PP-G), and
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three-phase to ground (PPP-G), which are ten in number, classified as phase to phase
faults and phase to ground faults [31]. These faults may be detected by identifying a
suitable sequence of fault currents for different types of faults. Whenever a fault occurs
on a 3-phase system, the sequence of the relaying inputs given by Eqs. (1) to (4) changes
depending upon the type of fault. The four relaying signals required to identify all types
of faults are computed as [32].

p1 = Va − (Ia + KI0 )Zn (1)

p2 = Vb − (Ib + KI0 )Zn (2)

p3 = Vc − (Ic + KI0 )Zn (3)

p4 = Vc (4)

where p1 , p2 , p3 , and p4 are sinusoidal relaying inputs, Va , Vb , and Vc are phase voltages
at the relay location, Ia , Ib , and Ic are line currents, Zn is line replica impedance, I0 is
zero sequence currents, ZL0 is zero sequence line impedance and K = (ZL0 − ZL )/ZL .
The input sequence can be sensed and detected and, accordingly, a trip signals for
a fault situation can be invoked depending upon the input signal. The phase sequence
during various faults is studied and it is found that the relay sequence detector gives trip
output only for the following distinct phase-sequences: p1 /p3 /p4 /p2 , p1 /p3 /p2 /p4 ,
p1 /p4 /p2 /p3 , and p1 /p3 / or p4 /p2 . These may be achieved by using Petri net theory.
In order to model a transmission line protection scheme using Petri net, the concept of
events and conditions is used. The occurrence of a fault is a discrete event, which changes
the power system from fault free condition to a fault condition. Events are actions that
take place in the system. Similarly the clearing of the fault and the resetting of the relays
are discrete events with change the state and may also be called condition. A condition
is a logical description of the system. Here the following sequences are used for fault
identification on three-phase over head transmission lines.

p1 p3 p4 p2 for phase ‘a’ to ground fault

p1 p4 p3 p2 for phase ‘b’ to ground fault
p1 p3 p2 p4 for phase ‘c’ to ground fault
p1 p3 for phase to phase faults
 274 M. Jamil

Figure 2. Sequences of firings for identification of faults.

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Here a, b, and c are the three phases of the overhead transmission line. When a fault
occurs on the transmission system, the main protective relay senses the fault signals and
sends a signal to actuate the corresponding circuit breaker. The circuit breaker then opens
and clears the faults. This series of device operations is modeled by Petri net for different
types of faults on transmission line. Different stages of Petri net based protection scheme
for the three-phase transmission system are shown in Figure 2 in a simplified form for
different types of faults.
Marking of the net represents the initial conditions of the protection scheme. There
is a token in place p1 , it means place p1 is live. Firing of transition t1 shifts the token
from p1 to R1 through different sequence of firings.
The shifting of token from one place to another suggests a change of state of the
transmission protection scheme, i.e., either fault free to faulty or faulty to healthy condi-
tion. For the token to be in place p1 , the system is in pre-fault condition, while a token in
place R1 indicates the relay sensing fault signals. The relay will then actuate the circuit
breaker by firing transition t4 and fault will be cleared. In Figure 2, the conditions are
represented by places pi , i = 1, 2, . . . , m and the events are represents by transition tj ,
j = 1, 2, 3, . . . , n. By adding more relays and circuit breakers, backup protection may
also be provided for reliable operation. Different types of faults are identified by different
sequences of firings. After modeling the protection schemes with Petri nets, the dynamic
properties of the system may be analyzed by a reachability graph. A marking Mn is set
to be reachable from marking M0 if there exist a sequence of firing. In order to simulate
the dynamic behavior of the protection system, marking in the Petri net is changed by
firing the corresponding transition. Firing of transition t1 in the marked graph show that
fault is occurring and the firing of transition changes the marking state. A sequence of
enabled transition firing produces a sequence of markings. Different markings identify the
different types of faults on the transmission lines. For example marking [10000] shows
the initial marking and firing of transition t1 changes the marking to [01000] indicating
that fault may be on the line and marking [00001] shows that relay R1 is sensing phase
‘a’ to ground fault on three phase transmission system. The sequence has four paths
which leads to identify four types of faults namely phase ‘a’ to ground, phase ‘b’ to
ground, phase ‘c’ to ground and phase to phase faults on the three phase transmission
system.
 Petri Nets in Power Systems 275

The topological information of each Petri net is contained in its incidence matrix.
Both the reachability graph and the incidence matrix are used to determine whether a
Petri net is conservative or not. A conservative protection scheme means dependable
and securable if it does not lose or gain tokens after all the transition firings. It is
observed that the proposed scheme also has the property of safeness since the number
of tokens in each place has not exceeded one. A protection relay scheme must also have
the property of properness, if it has the ability to return to its normal condition after
experiencing a fault. According to the above analysis, this protection scheme is proper
under the assumption that each relay set is in good operational condition. Similarly, for a
complicated system the dynamic and structural properties of the Petri net model can be
simulated and analyzed by computer. Therefore, Petri nets are flexible tools for dynamic
study.

7. Conclusions
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This article presents the current status of Petri net’s application to power systems. Brief
introduction of Petri net’s theory and its applications and limitations are also discussed. A
literature survey and list of papers published in the area of power system with Petri nets
application is presented. A Petri net based model for the protection of EHV transmission
line is also presented in the article. Types of faults on the three transmission lines have
been identified by using sequences of fault currents.

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