Applications of minimal path set and dual fault tree approach for piecewise reliability evaluation of large-scale electrical power systems

Reliability assessment techniques and programs handling is an important issue for both power systems planning and testing in existing power system configurations. The Assessment techniques are suitable for detecting weak points in the reliability assessment. The reliability study of bulk power systems indicates the ability of the composite generation and transmission system to satisfy the load demand at major load points. The major burden of the developed methods used is the computation time required to solve a large number of credible contingencies or outage states. This paper presents a novel approach capable of the reliability evaluation for real large-size networks using normal size computers. It calculates the reliability indices at individual load buses and reliability of the whole system. The effect of the loading factor between loads on reliability is also investigated. The proposed approach is expanded to calculate the reliability of composite generation and transmission system taking the following constraints into consideration: amount of reliability of system generation, amount of reliability of transmission lines, maximum system generation capacity, maximum transmission lines capacity and maximum connected load at each bus. The approach is based on the minimal path set and dual fault tree techniques. A new concept of "constant reliability region", which is utilized in the field of optimum operation of power networks, is introduced. A special program is developed for the proposed technique. The comparison between the proposed and the previous techniques confirms that the proposed method is more accurate and precise.