Strategic distribution automation-keys to increasing customer service and system reliability

The author presents two examples in which strategic distribution automation led to improvements in service reliability. Elements of the projects which were critical to their success, such as economic justification and sectionalizing methodology, are outlined. The improvements in supply reliability which resulted from these projects are quantified in the form of reduced outage or service restoration times. Distribution automation (DA) can be applied on the distribution feeder to achieve significant and immediate improvements in reliability-and hence, service to the utility customer. The reasons for DA implementation are diverse. However, the key need is and continues to be reliability improvement. The difficulty for this is proving the economic justification for reliability improvements. Each utility will typically take a different view of reliability and will have a different set of associated values through which a project is justified. These different approaches to justification are also discussed