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A Standalone System to Train and Evaluate Operators of Power Plants

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering ((LNEE,volume 103))

Abstract

Expert systems provide powerful and flexible tools to solve to a wide range of problems that often cannot be dealt by traditional approaches. In this way, the use of expert systems has proliferated to different technological areas. The inclusion of intelligent systems to train power plant operators is an interesting application due to the variety of operative conditions and the teaching methods available. In this development, two power plant simulators for operators training were integrated, along with an expert system and evaluation modules in a common simulation environment. This system is utilized to evaluate the trainees in theoretical aspects and in their operative actions on the simulated processes. The rule-based approach to knowledge representation was selected, and a graphic editor was developed to build the training exercises, it includes the simulation scenario, the execution sequence and the evaluation criteria. The final simulation system includes training exercises with specific objectives for each one of the simulated processes, and it has been implanted in a portable computer for its transportation and installation in the power plants, so the operators can use this system to practice onsite without the supervision of a human instructor.

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank all the personnel of the IIE and CENAC-I who participated in the project development. The simulation environment is proprietary software of the IIE, and it was customized to the particular requirements of this project.

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Correspondence to José Tavira-Mondragón .

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Tavira-Mondragón, J., Martínez-Ramírez, R., Jiménez-Fraustro, F., Orozco-Martínez, R., Cruz-Cruz, R. (2011). A Standalone System to Train and Evaluate Operators of Power Plants. In: Ao, SI., Amouzegar, M., Rieger, B. (eds) Intelligent Automation and Systems Engineering. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 103. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0373-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0373-9_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-0372-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-0373-9

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