Integrated assessment model of GIS operating under tropical conditions

For the past two decades, electricity utilities have struggled to provide high quality electrical power to their customers while keeping on spending effectively the expenses for operating and maintaining the power system. Unfortunately, under tropical conditions, operation circumstances affect the equipment so that either its lifetime is cut shorter or its failure rate is higher. One of the affected equipment is GIS installations. This paper focuses on the assessment model of a GIS operating under tropical conditions which consists of condition, lifetime and risk assessment. The condition assessment model is used to assess the health index of a GIS while the lifetime assessment measures the GIS degradation level. The risk assessment model is used to prioritize work delivery. The model is developed based on the understanding of how the tropical circumstances influence GIS long term performance. In this paper, the elaboration of the long-term performance focuses on the insulating system because this causes a major share of fatal failures. This knowledge is hence applied to develop a maintenance methodology for these circumstances to enable better tropical GIS performance.