Seasonality coefficients for the number and duration of outages in rural power grids, taking into account their causes

When predicting power consumption and power shortages in rural power grids, it is necessary to take into account the seasonality of emergency outages. However, the necessary data on the effect of seasonality on the reliability indicators of power grids are not available. Moreover, the regulatory and technical documentation fails to cover the issues of seasonality in the electric power industry. The study aimed to determine the seasonality coefficients for the failure flow and restoration time, taking into account the causes of outages in rural 0.4 kV power grids. Using statistical data from one of the central regions of Russia for the period between 2018 and 2023, the author identified the most significant causes of emergency outages in rural 0.4 kV power grids: consumer-caused outages, fuse blowing, wire splicing, wire breakage, and others. For each cause, the seasonality coefficients for the flow of failures and restoration time were calculated. The study found that the highest probability of emergency outage falls on the period from May to August; the seasonality coefficient for this period ranges between 1.15 and 1.83. In other periods, the coefficients are lower: from September to December - 0.71 to 1.06, from January to April - 0.54 to 0.67. The highest value of the seasonality coefficient by the restoration time was recorded in the period from May to August (1.27 to 2.03), the minimum - in January-February (0.44 to 0.52). Taking into account the seasonality coefficients for specific reasons will make it possible to forecast indicators of power supply reliability and plan better and more efficient measures to improve power grid reliability.