Development of Maintainability Metrics for Power Systems

This study focuses on developing methods to assess the optimality of maintenance campaign in terms of various criteria and the effect of maintenance on power system reliability. The assessment is based on a new set of metrics represented by power system maintainability indices. Adequacy metrics, in general, are ill-suited to deal with this problem: although the scope of power system adequacy assessment covers maintenance, the way it is done is either rudimentary or limited to a pre-specified list of maintenance requests. This study is centered on maintenance scheduling. Several metrics of power system maintainability are conceptualized, detailed, and tested. The analysis of the metrics employs Monte Carlo simulations. The metrics are tested by simulations on a modified standard test system to demonstrate that they are suitable for use in maintainability assessment of power systems. They perform best, however, when evaluating the criticality of generators and power transmission lines within the context of maintenance campaign. The findings from this study underscore the potential for further enhancement of the described procedures. Priority must be given to formulating indices and accelerating their calculation.