Reliability evaluation of distribution networks using fuzzy logic

Reliability is a measure of performance. This measure can be used to help systems meet performance criteria, to help quantify comparisons between various options, and to help make economic decisions. This paper presents a fuzzy knowledge based approach for reliability evaluation of a distribution network. This approach makes a direct assessment of the network configuration, distribution substation, the maintenance policy and the weather and assigns to the network under consideration a reliability index by expressing those variables mathematically using fuzzy logic. Results obtained using the fuzzy model on actual utility data are presented and compared to historical reliability indices. The flexibility of the fuzzy model allows for its application in simplification of complex concepts into easily handled models. Because of the simplicity of the model, the speed of computation is very fast. Thus, large systems could be evaluated easily with minimal computation time.