Researchers from INESC Porto receive award for best article

Two researchers from INESC Porto, Armando Leite da Silva as an invited researcher and Vladimiro Miranda as integrated in the Power Systems Unit, were awarded with prize paper at PMAPS 2008 - 10th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems, which took place in Puerto Rico last May.  This is one of the most important thematic conferences in the area that IEEE designated as Power Systems.

The paper explores the researchers’ original idea that consists of applying neural networks in order to accelerate Monte Carlo simulations of electric power systems. The neural networks are used to perform pattern recognition within the simulation process, thus avoiding tedious calculations in the evaluation of each simulation scenario.

With this process, it was possible to reduce calculation times for real systems, from several hours to just a few minutes, which represents a significant advance for the practical application of the Monte Carlo simulation to reliability assessent of large electrical systems.

This paper was co-authored by other two PhD students, one of which is Leónidas Resende, who recently returned back to Brazil and now holds a PhD degree. He did a traineeship at INESC Porto for a year where he started his work on the awarded idea.