Predictive Reliability Assessment in the Power Distribution System

The electrical utilities are facing market conditions and therefore have to plan and operate their distribution systems in a cost effective way. This implies that the customer’s requirement on reliability i.e. availability has to be balanced towards the cost for obtaining the same. An effective way to solving this issue is by the use of quantitative assessment of reliability, i.e. reliability indices, which is based on probability theory. However these methods require input data that defines the condition for the system and its components. is to predict the future behaviour based on collected data and measured performance.

The reliability assessment is normally used to evaluate performance of the distribution system network. The reliability of power Distribution system can be calculated by different reliability indices.This paper describes the reliability indices for two feeders of one is an industrial feeder and another one is an urban feeder. A software module (Reliability Assessment Module-RAM) has been used and the results of two practical distribution feeders are compared to benchmark the performance and operation of the power distribution system.