Reliability Considerations for Power System Design

Growth and increasing complexity of data processing and communications systems have expanded the requirements for reliability of the power subsystem. Reliability must be considered at the top level system design. Trade-offs between system design options can be facilitated using valid life-cycle-cost. LCC, models. Practical reliability is achieved when neither the customer nor the supplier is annoyed by the cost and inconvenience of component failure. Reliability trade-offs applicable to power system design such as functional and component redundancy and derated electronic part selection are presented. The reliability impact of load sharing is presented with examples showing that load sharing is not always desirable. The use of redundancy with built-in test can result in a conveniently maintainable power system with reduced LCC.