Power System

Reliability Analysis
Lecture 11

A. T 1
 Definition of Power System Reliability and Quality

• An electric power system serves the basic function of supplying customers,

both large and small, with electrical energy as economically and as reliably
as possible.
• The reliability associated with a power system is a measure of its ability to
provide an adequate supply of electrical energy for the period of time
intended under the operating conditions encountered.
• It is not physically possible in reality to have continuously available demand
due to random system failures which are generally outside the control of
power system engineers, operators and planners.
• Power system reliability (comprising generation and transmission &
distribution facilities) can be described by two basic functional attributes:
adequacy and security.

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 Definition of Power System Reliability and Quality
Cont.
• The probability of customers being disconnected can be reduced by
increased investment during either the planning phase, operating
phase, or both.

• Over-investment can lead to excessive operating costs which must be

reflected in the tariff structure. Consequently, the economic
constraints can be violated even though the system may be highly
reliable.

• On the other hand, under-investment can lead to the opposite

situation.

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 Definition of Power System Reliability and Quality
Cont.
• The criteria and techniques first used in practical applications were
basically deterministic ones, for instance;
• Planning generating capacity
• Operating capacity
• Planning network capacity
Although the above-mentioned three and other criteria have been
developed to account for randomly occurring failures, they are
inherently deterministic.

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 Definition of Power System Reliability and Quality
Cont.
Typical probabilistic aspects are as follows:

• Forced outage rate of generating units is known to be a function of

unit size and therefore a fixed percentage reserve cannot ensure a
consistent risk.

• Failure rates of overhead lines are functions of their lengths, design

aspects, locations and environment, etc. – Therefore, a consistent
risk of supply interruption cannot be ensured by constructing a
minimum number of circuits.
• All planning and operating decisions are based on load forecasting
techniques which cannot predict future loads precisely, i.e.,
uncertainties will always exist in the forecasts. This imposes
statistical
5 factors which should be assessed probabilistically.
 Definition of Power System Reliability and Quality
Cont.

• Failures of components, plant, and systems occur randomly. The

frequency, duration and impact of failures vary from one year to the
next.
• Generally all utilities record details of the events as they occur, and
produce a set of performance measures, such as:
• system availability
• estimated unsupplied energy
• number of incidents
• number of hours of interruption
• excursions beyond set voltage (and frequency) limits
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 Definition of Power System Reliability and Quality
Cont.
• These performance measures are valuable since:
• they identify weak areas needing reinforcements and
modifications
• they establish chronological trends in reliability performance
• they establish existing indices which serve as a guide for
acceptable values for future reliability assessments
• they enable previous predictions to be compared with actual
operating experience
• they monitor the response to system design changes
• The important thing to note is that the above measures are statistical
indices
7 - they are not deterministic values.
 Adequacy and Security

• For the sake of simplicity, power system reliability can be divided into
the two basic aspects of
• System adequacy, and
• System security

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Adequacy:
• A measure of the ability of the power system to supply the aggregate
electric power and energy requirements of the customers within
components ratings and voltage limits, taking into account planned and
unplanned outages of system components.
• Adequacy measures the capability of the power system to supply the
load in all the steady states, the power system may exist considering
standards conditions.

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Security:
• A measure of power system ability to withstand sudden disturbances
such as electric short circuits or unanticipated losses of system
components or load conditions together with operating constraints.
• Another aspect of security is system integrity, which is the ability to
maintain interconnected operation.
• Integrity relates to the preservation of interconnected system
operation, or avoidance of uncontrolled separation, in the presence
of specified severe disturbances.

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 Generating System Reliability Assessment

• Generating capacity reliability is defined in terms of the adequacy

of the installed generating capacity to meet the system load
demand.
• Outages of generating units and/or load in excess of the estimates
could result in “loss of load”, i.e., the available capacity (installed
capacity - capacity on outage) being inadequate to supply the load.
• Depending on the shortage of the available capacity, load shedding
may be initiated as the final measure after the emergency actions.
• The basic methodology for evaluating generating system reliability
is to develop probability models for capacity on outage and for load
demand, and calculate the probability of loss of load by a
convolution of the two models.

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 Generating System Reliability Assessment

Probabilistic Criteria and Indices

• An understanding of the probabilistic criteria and indices used in
generating capacity reliability (HLI) studies is important. These
include
1. loss of load probability (LOLP)
2. loss of load expectation (LOLE)
3. loss of energy expectation (LOEE)/expected energy not supplied
(EENS)
4. frequency & duration (F&D) indices
5. energy index of reliability (EIR)
6. energy index of unreliability (EIU), and

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 Generating System Reliability Assessment

Loss of Load Probability (LOLP)

• This is the oldest and the most basic probabilistic index. It is
defined as the probability that the load will exceed the available
generation.
• Its weakness is that it defines the likelihood of encountering
trouble (loss of load) but not the severity; for the same value of
LOLP, the degree of trouble may be less than 1 MW or greater than
1000 MW or more. Therefore it cannot recognize the degree of
capacity or energy shortage.

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 Generating System Reliability Assessment

Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE)

• This is now the most widely used probabilistic index in deciding

future generation capacity.
• It is generally defined as the average number of days (or hours) on
which the daily peak load is expected to exceed the available
capacity.
• It therefore indicates the expected number of days (or hours) for
which a load loss or deficiency may occur. This concept implies a
physical significance not forthcoming from the LOLP, although the
two values are directly related.
• It has the same weaknesses that exist in the LOLP.
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 Generating System Reliability Assessment

Loss of Energy Expectation (LOEE/EENS)

• This index is defined as the expected energy not supplied (EENS)
due to those occasions when the load exceeds the available
generation.
• It is presently less used than LOLE but is a more appealing index
since it encompasses severity of the deficiencies as well as their
likelihood.
• It therefore reflects risk more truly and is likely to gain popularity
as power systems become more energy-limited due to reduced
prime energy and increased environmental controls.

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 Generating System Reliability Assessment

EIR and EIU

• These are directly related to LOEE which is normalized by
dividing by the total energy demanded.
• This basically ensures that large and small systems can be
compared on an equal basis and chronological changes in a system
can be tracked.

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 Generating System Reliability Assessment

Frequency & Duration (F&D) Indices

• The F&D criterion is an extension of LOLE and identifies expected

frequencies of encountering deficiencies and their expected
durations.
• It therefore contains additional physical characteristics but,
although widely documented, is not used in practice. This is due
mainly to the need for additional data and greatly increased
complexity of the analysis without having any significant effect on
the planning decisions.

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 Reliability Indices

System Oriented Reliability Indices, number of Interruptions

• Weighting by number of customers
– System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) :

σ𝑛
𝑖=1 𝑓𝑖 𝑁𝑖
𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑡 𝑁 (interruption/year)
σ𝑖=1 𝑖

fi = number of interruptions at load point i

Ni = number of customers connected to load point i
n = number of load points interrupted
ntot = total number of load points

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 Reliability Indices

SAIFI example

• 100 customers on the system

• 60 customers had a sustained interruption
(or 30 customers had two interruptions: 30 x 2 = 60)
• SAIFI = 60 = 0.6
100

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 Reliability Indices

System Oriented Reliability Indices, annual Interruption Time

• Weighting by number of customers

– System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) :

σ𝑛
𝑖=1 𝑓𝑖 𝑟𝑖 𝑁𝑖
𝑛
𝑡𝑜𝑡 𝑁 (hours/year)
σ𝑖=1 𝑖

firi = annual outage time for load point i

ri = Average outage duration for load point I
Ni = number of customers connected to load
point i
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 Reliability Indices

SAIDI example

100 customers on the system

14 customers experienced a 3-hour outage
14 x 3 = 42 hours or 2520 minutes
2520
SAIDI = = 25.2
100
Average of 25.2 minutes per customer

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 Reliability Indices

System Oriented Reliability Indices, Average Interruption Duration

• Weighting by number of customers
– Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI) :

𝑆𝐴𝐼𝐷𝐼
CAIDI = (hours/interruption)
𝑆𝐴𝐼𝐹𝐼

𝑛
𝑡𝑜𝑡 𝑁
σ𝑛
𝑖=1 𝑓𝑖 𝑟𝑖 𝑁𝑖
σ𝑖=1 𝑖
= 𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑡 𝑁 x σ𝑛
σ𝑖=1 𝑖 𝑖=1 𝑓𝑖 𝑁𝑖

σ 𝐷𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑢𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛
CAIDI = σ
𝑁𝑜.𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑢𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠

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 Reliability Indices

CAIDI example

100 customers on the system

10 customers experienced a 40-minute outage
 Cust. Int. Duration = 400 minutes
Total number of customers interrupted = 10
400
CAIDI = = 40
10

Average of 40 minutes per interrupted customer.

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 Reliability Indices

System Oriented Reliability Indices

• Momentary Average Interruption Frequency Index (MAIFI)

• The average frequency of momentary interruptions.

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 Reliability Indices

MAIFI example

• 100 customers on the system

(2 feeders, 50 customers each)

• 50 customers had 12 momentary interruptions; the other

50 customers had 8 momentary interruptions.
(1 breaker had 12 operations; 1 breaker had 8)
• (50 x 12) + (50 x 8) = 600 + 400 = 1000
• MAIFI =1000 = 10.0
100
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 Reliability Indices

The Average Service Availability (Unavailability) Index (ASAI)

• ASAI specifies the fraction of time that a customer has received the power
during the predefine interval of time and is vice versa for ASUI.
• This is the ratio of the total number of customer hours that service was
available during a year to the total customer hours demanded.
• Customer hours demanded are determined as the twelve-month average
number of customers served timed 8760 hours. This is sometimes known as
the “Service Reliability Index”
*100%

• The complementary value to this index, i.e. the Average Service

Unavailability Index may also be used. This is the ratio of the total number of
customer hours that service was unavailable during a year to the total
customer hours demanded
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 Reliability Indices

ASAI example
• 365 days x 24 hours/day = 8760 hours per year
• 100 customers
• 876,000 customer-hours
• 44 customers experience a 60-minute outage (2640
customer-minutes, or 44 customer-hours)
• ASAI = 876,000 – 44 = 875,956 =
876,000 876,000
= 0.99995 or 99.995%
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 Reliability Indices

System Oriented Reliability Indices, Unavailability, Energy Not

Supplied
• Average Service Unavailability Index

• Energy Not Supplied

ENS = σ𝑛𝑖=1 𝑃𝑎𝑣 𝑖 𝑓𝑖 𝑟𝑖 (Kwh/year)

𝑃𝑎𝑣 𝑖 : Average load connected to load point i

• Average Energy Not Supplied (AENS):

𝐸𝑁𝑆
AENS = 𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑡 (Kwh/year)
σ𝑖=1 𝑁𝑖

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 Cost-Benefit Considerations

• COST of providing quality and continuity of service should be

related to the worth or benefit of having that quality and continuity
• Due to the complex and integrated nature of a power system, failures
in any part of the system can cause interruptions which range from
inconveniencing a small number of local residents to a major and
widespread catastrophic disruption of supply.
• The economic impact of these outages is not necessarily restricted to
loss of revenue by the utility or loss of energy utilization by the
customer, but in order to estimate the true costs, should also include
indirect costs imposed on customers, society, and the environment
due to the outage.

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 Cost-Benefit Considerations
• The basic concept of reliability cost/reliability worth evaluation is relatively
simple and can be presented by the curves of the figure shown below. These
curves show that the investment cost generally increases with higher
reliability. On the other hand, the customer costs associated with failures
decrease as the reliability increases.

Utility and customer costs

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 Cost-Benefit Considerations

• The total costs are the sum of these two individual costs. This total
cost exhibits a minimum, and so an “optimum” or target level of
reliability is achieved.
• Two difficulties usually arise in the total cost assessment. Firstly,
the calculated indices are usually derived only from approximate
models. Secondly, there are significant problems in assessing
customer perceptions of system failure costs.

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 Cost-Benefit Considerations

• Broadly speaking, the cost of a power interruption from the

customer's perspective is dependent both on the customer and
interruption characteristics.
• Customer characteristics include
• type of customer,
• nature of his/her activities/demand requirements.
• Outage costs will therefore vary substantially between customers
within a class, and between classes of customers.
• Interruption characteristics include the parameters of frequency,
duration and magnitude of outage, time of occurrence, time of year,
whether partial outage or complete, etc.
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A. T 33