Determination of preventive maintenance periodicities of standby devices

This article presents a statistical approach of analysis and decision that uses reliability techniques to define the best periodicity for preventive maintenance of power system protective relays. Relays are standby devices and may stay in the hidden failure state when they are not working. This state of failure generates difficulties in the determination of preventive maintenance periodicities. A case study presented in this work deals specifically with the reliability of the transmission and distribution system protective relays of CEMIG (the state owned Electrical Power Company of Minas Gerais, Brazil). Preventive maintenance data of protective relays obtained during a 4-year period were used in the proposed method. The choice of the periodicities, distinguished by groups of similar relay and voltage operation levels of the protected systems, is made according to the failure risk level that the company is willing to take. The main result obtained by using this method is a substantial reduction of 62% in the amount of preventive maintenance work load for the relays of the distribution system.