Space Station Freedom Electrical Power Research Articles

Autonomous power expert system

The Autonomous Power Expert (APEX) system has been designed to monitor and diagnose fault conditions that occur within the Space Station Freedom Electrical Power System (SSF/EPS) Testbed. The APEX system is being developed at the NASA Lewis Research Center by the Space Electronics Division (SED) in conjunction with the Space Station Directorate and Power Technology Division (PTD). APEX is designed to interface with SSF/EPS testbed power management controllers to provide enhanced autonomous operation and control capability. The APEX architecture consists of three components: (1) a rule-based expert system, (2) a testbed data acquisition interface, and (3) a power scheduler interface. Fault detection, fault isolation, justification of probable causes, recommended actions, and incipient fault analysis are the main functions of the expert system component. The data acquisition component requests and receives pertinent parametric values from the EPS testbed and asserts the values into a knowledge base. Power load profile information is obtained from a remote scheduler through the power scheduler interface component. This paper will discuss the current APEX design and development work. Operation and use of APEX by way of the user interface screens will also be covered.