Operational reliability assessment of power systems considering condition-dependent failure rate

Failure rate of a system component is usually assumed to be constant in conventional reliability evaluation of power systems. It has been realised from the real-time operation that a component will experience more failures during heavy loading condition than those during light loading condition, which means that the failure rate of a component in real-time operation is not constant and varies with loading condition. In order to evaluate system operational reliability related to load condition, the factors affected condition-dependent failure rate (CDFR) are investigated and a basic CDFR model is proposed in this study. In predictive operational reliability study, equipment loading condition for a given load period is determined using AC power flow based on the corresponding load level with considering load uncertainty. A four-state model has been proposed to represent a system component. The equations for determining the probability of each state for the four-state model have been derived. A technique based on these equations and models has been developed to evaluate operational and annual reliability indices of components, load points and system. The IEEE-RTS has been analysed to illustrate the proposed models and technique.