Incorporating Station Related Aging Failures in Bulk System Reliability Analysis

Incorporating Station Related Aging Failures in Bulk System Reliability Analysis

This paper proposes methods to incorporate station related aging failures in composite system reliability assessment. Aging failures of station components, such as circuit breakers and bus bars, are a major concern in composite power system planning and operation as an increasing number of station components approach the wear-out phase. This paper presents probabilistic models for circuit breakers involving aging failures and relevant evaluation techniques to examine the effects of station related aging outages. The technique developed to incorporate station related aging failures are illustrated by application to a small composite test system. The paper illustrates the effects of circuit breaker aging outages on bulk system reliability evaluation and examines the relative effects of variations in component age. System sensitivity analysis is illustrated by varying selected component parameters. The results show the implications of including component aging failure considerations in the overall analysis of a composite system.