Reliability Assessment Tools For Utilities in the De-regulated Electricity Market

Many utilities in the de-regulated electricity market are using a variety of reliability assessment tools (reliability programs) to assist them in managing effectively their assets with regard to new investment decisions. These assessment tools can be simple or complicated depending on the problems at hand and can be used for operating, planning and asset management purposes. This paper describes in brief three reliability assessment tools that have been in use at Hydro One for assessing the reliability of bulk transmission and customer delivery (regional supply) systems. Some important applications of these tools to the IEEE reliability test system and the Hydro One network system will also be discussed.