Prioritization of Transmission Network Components Based on their Failure Impact on Reliability of Composite Power Systems

This paper proposes an efficient method to identify the importance of transmission network components from the network’s reliability perspective. The proposed method is able to reveal the weak points of the network and can be employed as useful tool by power system planners to identify where investments should be made to increase the overall system reliability. The proposed approach has two main stages, including evaluation of the network contingency states and a sensitivity analysis which shows the link between reliability of each component and overall system reliability. Unlike the similar methods in this area and with the help of two reasonable simplifications, the proposed method can be employed to real transmission networks with acceptable computational burden. The proposed method is implemented on two test systems including the IEEE Reliability Test System (IEEE RTS) and the Roy Billinton Test System (RBTS). The obtained results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach.