Reliability Modelling in Systems with Non-Exponential Down Time Distributions

There has been considerable work done in the past few years on the development and analysis of reliability models for power system components, subsystems and systems1. The most well known models are probably those which have evolved in the development of reliability techniques in the capacity planning area. The basic concepts of state probabilities and the frequencies associated with state encounters have also been successfully applied in subsystem and integrated system aanalysis2,3. State transition diagrams have been utilized to analyze the benefits or penalties associated with different step-up transformer arrangements for a large generating unit4. The modelling techniques illustrated in these applications are not vastly different and the solutions were obtained by considering the system as a conventional Markov process.