Reliability estimation of Iran's power network

Today, the electricity power system is the most complicated engineering system has ever been made. The integrated power generating stations with power transmission lines has created a network, called complex power network. The reliability estimation of such complex power networks is a very challenging problem, as one cannot find any immediate solution methods in current literature. In this paper, we advanced a new method for estimating the reliability of such networks, which is based on 1) decomposition of the whole network into sub-networks called islands, 2) estimating each island’s reliability in exact form using the network reliability theory, and 3) assembling the islands back together to estimate the whole network reliability, again in exact form. We applied the new method on Iran’s power network with 105 generation stations and 16460 kilometres of transmission lines.