Description

Many electrical devices with considerable life spans are subjected to deterioration throughout their useful lives. Catastrophic failures of such devices in power systems reduce system reliability, while causing substantial economic losses. Electrical utilities adopt maintenance strategies to reduce the occurrence of catastrophic failures. However, too frequent inspection and maintenance would increase the inspection and maintenance cost of equipment. Thus, it is desirable to use asset management tools to make right decisions regarding maintenance of equipment, considering the tradeoff between reliability and cost. Many asset management tools are based on probabilistic maintenance models. This lecture presents two newly developed probabilistic maintenance models for asset management tools. In two application studies, optimal maintenance policies are determined for circuit breakers and transformers using real data. These application studies show the usefulness of asset management tools for maintenance scheduling and maintenance related decision making in power systems.