Enabling a national service provider market for distribution network maintenance services

There is an increasing awareness among distribution companies on developing maintenance strategies for the distribution system assets which take into account the different aspects of risk which the companies are facing.. This paper describes a framework for risk-based maintenance management, where standardized specifications of maintenance actions play an important role. These specifications help the communication between Asset Managers (AM) and Service providers (SP), allowing for the AMs to buy specified services in an open competitive market rather than through only in-house entrepreneur divisions - hereby making the competition between SPs influence on the price formation.