Measuring the impacts of an RCM program on power system performance

Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) is the preferred maintenance policy among electric utilities, offering solid qualitative and empirical methods. Although probabilistic methods have been developed for choosing optimum RCM task frequencies, few cases describe their use on large power grids. This contribution reports on the application of such methods to more then 90 high-voltage stations operated by the largest generation and transmission company from Brazil. Several power system performance indexes and corporate results were modeled and measured from company operating and economic data, to validate the model, before and after its adoption. The work reports on the methods used to measure such impacts, availing the results for company owners and clients.