Guidelines for performance based distribution reliability analysis for present and future grid

Abstract

The electric power system has experienced many changes in the last decade. The notable changes are deregulation of the industry, penetration of renewable energy sources, demand side management, stricter regulations on the system performance, investigation of smart-grid applications, emission regulations on generation and penetration of electric vehicles. These changes have forced the utilities to look for innovative ideas to incorporate the changes while ensuring the performance requirements. One way to measure the performance requirements is in terms of customer satisfaction. In other words the utility is expected to provide uninterrupted power supply on demand. The challenges in achieving this are limited by the increasing load / demand on the system and the aging of the components. In US on average 80% of consumer interruptions are attributed to the failures at the distribution level. Therefore, this work focuses on improving the performance of the distribution system using a preventive maintenance scheme based on the condition of the distribution level components. Impact on the system due to expected penetration of electric vehicles (EV) and the communication advancements for the smart-grid applications are also given noteworthy consideration in this work.