EE 527

Reliability Assessment of Power Systems

Lecture 1
Dr. Mohammad Al-Muhaini
Where these course notes come from
Panida Jirutitijaroens EE5712 class notes

R. Billinton and R. Allan, Reliability Evaluation of Power Systems,
second edition, Plenum Press, 1996.

R. Billinton and W. Li, Reliability Assessment of Electric Power Systems
using Monte Carlo Methods, Plenum Press, 1994.

Richard Brown, Electric Power Distribution System Reliability, CRC
Press, Florida, 2009.

R. Ramakumar, "Engineering Reliability Fundamentals and
Applications", Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1993.

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Quality vs. Reliability
The Power Quality definition based on IEEE Std 1100-1999 Recommended Practice for
Powering and Grounding Electronic Equipment:

The concept of powering and grounding electronic equipment in a manner
that is suitable to the operation of that equipment and compatible with the
premise wiring system and other connected equipment.
PQ is a set of electrical boundaries that allows a piece of equipment to function in
its intended manner without signicant loss of performance or life expectancy
Another Definition
The reliability definition based on IEEE 90 standard is

the ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated
conditions for a specified period of time
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IEEE Classification of PQ Disturbances
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IEEE Classification of PQ Disturbances
System reliability is more concerned with the continuity of the service
(sustained and momentary interruptions)

Power quality pertains to other power problems such as voltage fluctuations,
harmonic distortion, and variations in the wave shape or magnitude.
So ?
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Reliability vs. Availability

Even though availability and reliability are used interchangeably in several papers in the
literature, they are not the same in concept and values.


The availability is the probability that the component or the system is working as expected
during its operational cycle.

It shows how share of time the system is working.

Availability depends on both the expected time to fail and time to repair the component or
the system.


The typical and simple equation to calculate the availability is,

=

+



6
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Reliability vs. Availability

The reliability basically represents the probability of a component or a system to perform its
designed function without any failure under the normal working environment.

The reliability does not reflect or contain any time to repair the failed component.

It mainly reflects how long the system expected to work at a specific time before it fails.


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For continues operating systems such as power systems,

it is more informative to study the availability of the components and system to address the
quality of service provided to the customers.

The term reliability will be used in this course as a general word that represents the all the
aspects of the study (availability, unavailability, failure frequency, duration . etc) rather than a
quantity or a value.
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Momentary vs. Sustained Interruptions

The momentary interruption is any interruption of duration of less than one-five minutes

The sustained interruption as any interruption of duration equal or more than one-five
minutes.



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Planned vs. Unplanned
Interruptions

Planned power interruptions occur to allow essential maintenance to be undertaken on the
network. Customers will always be informed when a planned power interruption is due to
occur.

Unplanned power interruptions can occur for a number of reasons such storms, fires or car
accidents



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Common Causes of Power Interruptions


Severe weather such as: tornados, lightning, wind, earthquakes and snow.

Vehicle or machinery accidents

Human errors

Animal life, such as birds or possums

Vandalism

Fires

overloads

equipment failure

Some factors can be controlled or optimized such as:
vehicles or construction accidents, overloads, animals
contacts, equipment failure or wear out.

Most of the power problems can be reduced by
implementing the underground connections but then
the cost and maintenance inflexibility will increase.
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Which System is more reliable ?
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Qualitative vs. Quantitative
Deterministic VS. Probabilistic


Deterministic Approach ( Qualitative)

N-m contingency analysis

System with N components should be able to serve peak load when loss m components
(Sometimes called security analysis)


Probabilistic Approach (Quantitative)

Reliability is basically quantified by the probability of a component or system to operate as
expected or not to operate as expected.

Moreover, the duration and frequency of miss-operation are significant in evaluating the
reliability of a device or system.



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Motivations for Quantitative Reliability

To evaluate system performance
System design purpose
Trade-off reliability with cost
Increasing complexity of systems
Competitiveness
Establish standard in operation procedure



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utilities are seeking more accurate data and predictions about the electrical service
and its availability to keep their customers satisfied.

It is also important to investigate how component failures and repair rates can affect
the overall reliability of the system.
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Component vs. System Modeling
BATHTUB CURVE CONCEPT
Component

- Number of states
- Failure rate
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Component vs. System Modeling
System

- System configuration/topology
- How each component interact

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Major events such as severe weather conditions are usually excluded when
calculating the reliability indices since the weather conditions can have a major effect
on the indices based on the location and configuration of the system.

Excluding major events allow the utilities to respond to the real changes of the
systems reliability.

Should the major events be included in the reliability indices
calculation?
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Utilities used different approaches to define and exclude the major events from the
reliability indices.

One approach to classify any event as a major event is when the event causes 10%
of the utility customers to lose service for 24 hours

Another approach to classify the major events is when 15% of the customers
experience an outage during the severe weather condition

How to define the major event?
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=
(+2.5)

An IEEE working group has proposed a statistical approach to the problem to define
Major Event Days or MEDs. Their recommendation, known as the Beta Method, works
like this

The major event day (MED) is any event that causes the outage duration time to be
more than major event threshold minutes (T
MED
) .. T
MED
can be calculated as,
where,
e = exponential constant
= log average of the daily SAIDI for last five years
= log standard deviation of the daily SAIDI for last five years.