Integration of societal outage cost into infrastructure design and maintenance optimisation

The paper presents quantitative RAM-based economic models capable of supplying early and realistic information on the envisaged lifespan economic performance of energy infrastructure systems during their conceptual designs. Unlike the conventional cost models which do not take these RAM characteristics into account, the models in this paper provide an early trade-off between the RAM attributes the designer wants to incorporate in the system and the cost of having them. The economic models thus provide the designer the ultimate leeway of selecting more intrinsically reliable and more inherently maintainable components or subsystem of the infrastructure system at a more affordable investment costs. The paper focusses on a user friendly formulation for incorporating the social costs, which are typical for infrastructures that operate in the public domain, in the cost structure of infrastructure systems. To demonstrate the implementation and utility of these economic models, it has been applied to a district heating network (DHN) case study.