Making business sense of distribution automation systems: the case of Eskom, South Africa

Despite the plethora of Distribution Automation (DA) activity that occurred in the last two decades, very few utilities have embarked on large-scale DA implementation. The main reasons for this appears to have been uncertainty about which DA functions should be implemented and, second, the difficulty in financially justifying DA investments. The paper investigates the combination of DA functions that could best address Eskom´s business requirements and, second, upon reaching this conclusion, proceeds to develop a model by which proposed investments in DA systems could be evaluated.