General Review on Aging Electricity Distribution Systems and Maintenance Strategies

v.

Raviraj

Kadam", Gopal S. Patil2,

Rajesh M. Holmukhe"

lSection Engineer, Pune Rural, Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd., Email: ravLmsedcl@gmail.com 2Assistant Engineer, Pune Rural, Maharastra State Electridty Distribution Company ltd., 3Assistant Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Bharti vidyapeeth COE, Pune-46,

ABSTRACT The deregulation of electricity markets has increased the consciousness of economical factors in electricity network utifities.To get a maximum return on investments, the asset management has become more important. As system equipment continue to age and gradually deteriOrate the probability of service interruption due to component failure increases. An effective maintenance strategy is essential in delivering safe and reliable electrical power to customers economically. Thispaper discussesaging infrastructure of power industry. economics of aging coupled with well developed process of optimizing equipment life cycle. Thispaper is an attempt to discussan effort made to maximize life times of electricity network components through proper maintenance strategy and to minimize maintenance cost in the same time without decreasing the reliability of supply. In many countries the lifetimes of distribution networks are coming to their end. In the " near future the decisions on renovation or repairing of networks will be unavoidable. Keywords: Equipment Aging. life cycles. Condition monitoring, deterioration. INTRODUCTION As the deregulation of electricity market has increased the consciousness and responsibility of economical factors in electricity network utilities. working methods are and will be changed radically. To get maximum return on investment, the asset management has become more important. In principle, improving system reliability and reducing operational and maintenance cost are top priority of electricity utilities [13]. One of the main components of electric power delivery asset management is capital budgeting and O&M of existing facilities. Since in many cases the cost of construction and equipment purchase are fixed, O&M expenditures is the primary candidate for cost cutting and potential savings as the equipment continue to age and gradually deteriorate, the probability of service interruption due to component failure increases.

Electric utilities are confronted with many challenges in this new era of competition: RisingO&M cost, growing demand on system, maintaining high level of reliability and power quality, and managing equipment aging. Therefore, the health of equipment is of at most importance to the industry because revenues are affected by condition of equipment [12]. When demand is high and equipment is in working order, substantial revenues can be realized. On the contrary, unhealthy equipment can result in service interruption, customer dissatisfaction, lossof goodwill, and eventual lossof customer. An effecfive maintenance strategy is essential to deliver safe and reliable elecfrical power to customers economically. Equipment Aging Today, preserving and or enhancing system reliability and reducing operation and maintenance cost are top prioriTIesfor elecmc UTIlities [8]. A UTIlity buys a transmission and disfribution components- a PSC/RSJpoles, service transformers, indoor medium voltage brealcer, or underground cable section. And puts it in to operation soon there operofion. leaving it in service while tending to it with maintenance and repair as necessary until it fails. at which point it is replaced. Becfrical equipment deteriorates (wear out) while in service for a host of causes. Theseinclude sustained heating due to electrical current flow, insulation degradation due to voltage tress,wear and material fatigue of mechanical parts. corrosion from chemicals in the soil,air. or from byproducts of material deterioration, damage by vegetation, insects, animals and man as well as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthqualces and floods, and a slow but steady deteriora1ion due to the effect of sun,wind, rain, ice and snow. As system equipment conTInues to age and gradually deteriorates the probability of service interruption due to component failure increases [12]. Concept of life lime Equipment performs both technical and economic functions in power systems.There are three different concepts of life time for power system equipment:

o. Physical e lime A piece of equipment start to operate from its brand new condition to a status in which it can no longer be used in normal operating state and must be retired. Preventive maintenance can prolong its physical life time. b. Technical life time A piece of equipment may have to be replaced due to technical reason although it may still be physically used. For example. A new technology is developed for a type of equipment and manufacturers no longer produce spare parts. This may result in a

situation in which utilities cannot obtain necessary parts or parts become too expensive for maintenance. c. Economic life time A piece of equipment no longer valuable economically, although it still may be usable physically. There are two methods for estimating the economic life time: The capital value of any power equipment each depreciated every year. Once the remaining capital value approaches zero, the equipment reaches the end of its economic life time. In addition to depreciating the capital cost of equipment. operating and maintenance cost are considered. O&M cost usually increases over time as equipment ages and may become excessive. They may even exceed the depreciated value of the equipment. It could be cost effective to retire and replace the equipment before itscapital value reacheszero rather than continue to face high O&M costs [7].
Tackling of aging infrastructure

Thespecific approaches to aging infrastructureare different for each utility.And utilities are focusing on developing data ware housesand information management skillsto help track the age and the condition of the equipment [1]. Industrymust develop the condition monitoring and tracking databases as well as the planning and management mechanism to utilize that information. If it is to manage aging and it effects well appficable generalization that can be applied to aging eleciric utility infrastructurewhich are listed below: Average age isnot as important as the amount of very old equipment. Most important is the amount of equipment that will become very old in the next decade. Inspection, maintenance and service priorities should be different for older equipment. Information on age, condition, and service and maintenance history is a key to effectively targeting older equipment. Changes in operational procedures can improve performance and lower cost significantly. Optimizing equipment lifecycle There are a variety of issues that must be considered when actively managing equipment over its entire lifecycle. Some of the more important include condition monitoring, life extension, repair vs. replace and optimize lifecycle management. o, Condition monitoring: Some prerequisite for a condition monitoring system are illustrated in a fig.l below

EQUIPMENT DEFECT

Sensorresponsive to leading defect Noise reductiJn and data transmission

Data interpretation and decision making

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CORRECT DECISION ON PLANT STATUS Figure 1: lil'rroc:r-r-.:"""":>'ft""'O:.....,...."T"<7'r~~"""'......,...,rrtaking by a condition monitoring system There are three major links in the chain in making a correct and timely decision in response to an equipment defect. whether this is incremental such as premature insulation degradation or sudden such as a defect threatening plant failure and lossof supply [1]. The more a utility can distinguish be1ween the equipment that need attention and that which does not. The more it can cut costs while managing aging and its effect well. Condition assessmentat all level of an elecfric system is challenging. Many utilities are placing much more emphasis on retaining and using data on condition and its trends to drive changes in when and how they care for equipment. Often these efforts focused on more aggressive inspection and testing. Techniques that are becoming more popular include infrared inspection; dissolve gasin - oil analysis. frequency response signatures and many others. Online conditioning is also becoming more popular especially for substation equipment that can be cost effectively monitor through SCADA systems. Online techniques range from simple alarms (e.g. temperature and pressure) to continuous monitoring of dissolve gas in oil [6].

b. Life extension Equipment replacement is often expensive, resource intensive, and operationally disruptive. For this reason utilities are increasingly looking at life extension strategies as a way to defer replacement. Often an equipment life extension program is coupled with a condition monitoring program. When the condition of a piece of equipment reaches

a certain degree of deterioration, life extension options are examine for economic attractiveness [5]. c. Repair vs. replace Utilitypractices stillvary widely in this area with some utilitiesmaking explicit repair vs. replace decisions. While others only replace equipment if it fails or becomes overloaded. d. Optimized lifecycle management The uHimate goal of a utility isto provide reliable elecfridty for the lowest rates. Inherent in this goal is life cycle cost minimizafion of equipment and the systemsthey constitute. Ideally the utility determines the policies of utilization. operation. inspection. maintenance-repair. retirement and replacement in an integrated manner aimed at minimizing totallevelized cost. In effect. the utility is optimizing expected rlfetime vs. cost. A strategy of 'over specify it' (Keep loading low. care it well) will result in equipment that lastslong time but might prove expensive to own. A strategy of 'starve it' (cut all possible costs out of the initial purchase cost. load it highly. inspect and service it infrequently) will result in equipment that cost much lessto own but might fail far sooner. Somewhere in the middle there is a optimum point for every type of equipment and application [5]. Thisis a simple concept. but making it work is only just becoming feasible in power industry. Optimized lifecycle management requires good data. effective conditions and remaining life analysis and evaluation, sound implementation. In the middle item isa particular challenge for some equipment. Maintenance philosophy Since a gool of any electric utility company is to supply reliable power to customers at low cost, prevention of power system failures is of paramount importance during the design and operation of the system. Distribution systems have the greatest impact on customer outage frequency and duration. On overhead distribution systems, a fault can be classified as temporary or permanent. Approximately 75 to 90 percent of the faults are of a temporary nature caused by trees, animals, lightning, high winds, flashovers, and so on [11]. If the temporary fault cannot be cleared by the automatic interrupting devices, it will become a permanent fault that requires repairs by a Crew. Note that other utility companies may experience different conditions of distribution faults. Some of the failures cannot be avoided, such as lightning, whereas others can be prevented by proper maintenance plans. Maintenance is an important part of the life-cycle of embedded systems, and must be considered from the design stage through the end-of-life stage of the system.Maintenance covers two aspects of systems - operation and performance. Maintenance is generally performed in anticipation of, or in reaction to, a failure. Maintenance is performed to ensure or restore system performance to specified levels [10]. Once the equipment has been purchased it must

be maintained. Maintenance is defined as the restoring of an item to its original condition or to working order. Maintenance isdefined in IEEE power engineering society (PES)task force report as an activity "wherein an un failed device has, from time to time, its deterioration arrested, reduced or eliminated". Thiscan be achieved by repair, replacement of parts or total replacement of the item. The management makes the choice between these alternative measures based on practical and economic grounds. The decision made at the purchasing will have an input into the type of the maintenance to be carried out. In fact the manufactures /suppliers provide the details of regular maintenance schedule. This may be rigorously followed for the better performance as well as the increasing the life of equipment. Rg.2 below shows evolution process of maintenance strategies.

Maintenance strategy

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Rg.2 Evolution of maintenance strategies Maintenance strategy

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ReiabiHy centered
rnnintPnOI'V"

When the maintenance is being planned, the first decision is to select the appropriate maintenance strategy. The maintenance strategies consist of operations and means, which are chosen to achieve the set general goals of the utility within a general strategic plan. An effective maintenance isnot synonym for low-cost maintenance. The most important is to see the influence of maintenance actions on the Process and operation results. For example, in the case of electricity network, the resultscan be decreased number of outages and shortened outage times or better quality of electricity [7]. The maintenance strategy can be divide into two classes.The first one is corrective maintenance and the second one is the preventive maintenance. Corrective maintenance (CM) includes faults occurred in the electricity network. Nowadays, well known strategies applied to preventive maintenance are time-based maintenance (TBM), condition based maintenance (CBM) and reliability centered maintenance (RCM) [5]. A time based maintenance strategy features predefined

intervals rooted in empirical feedback, where components are checked or replaced after a specified period of use. Thisapproach generally produces satisfactory results. However, it will not be the most cost-effective option in all cases, since the equipment will not usually remain in operation up to the end of the possible life time. Condition based maintenance is driven by technical condition of the equipment. Under this approach, all major parameters are considered in order to determine the technical condition with maximized accuracy. Forthis reason, detailed information via diagnostic methods or monitoring systemsshould be available. The condition based strategy can be considered a kind of basic s1rategy of developed methods. Reliabili1ycentered methods is a strategy which additionally includes a reliabili1y-based part [2]. Aim of this approach is to combine the importance of the equipment in the network and the actual condition of the equipment. The selection of maintenance strategy has to be made for every component 1ype and in some in some cases for every component. There is not only right solution for certain component. but some guidelines for the selection can be given as in figure 3.

figure 3: Selection of maintenance strategy for components or component groups. General concluding remark Equipment aging is a fact of rife in power systems.Dealing with aged equipment has been a challenge in the utili1yindustry for year. Aging infrastructure will have higher cost to operate and maintain and, more importantly, lower reliability. The lower reliability of aging infrastructure makes the physical system less reliable and the electricity market more risky. In this paper discusses the issues of power system equipment aging, concepts of life time and optimizing equipment life cycle. Maintenance activity can extend the life of equipment but could be very costly for equipment at their end-of-life stage. A compromise between and replacement must be carefully considered.

Acknowledgements We are thankful to MSEDCL (Pune Rural Circle) & Bharati Vidhyapeeth CaE, Pune for promoting us for this project. This study is carried out at O&M Division Manchar & SubDivision Junnar; writers especially express their appreciation to the Department of Electrical Engineering, Pune. We especially acknowledge support from library staff of BVCOE. The author would like to thank Executive Engineer Mr.D.V.Padalkar ,MSEDCl,Manchar Division

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