RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT OF DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS

The reliability assessment of a power distribution system is concerned with power availability and power quality at each customer’s service entrance. This research presents a method, termed Hierarchical Markov modeling (HMM), which can perform predictive distribution system reliability assessment. Reliability assessment in power system is concerned with the supply of electricity to consumers reliably at all times. In today’s generation and distribution of energy resources, it is very difficult to have a reliable energy supply due to additional uncertainties introduced because of new technologies; hence, it is imperative to improve on models to give some expected degree of reliability among the consumers. Reliability assessment is of primary importance in designing and planning distribution systems that operate in an economical manner with minimal interruption of customer loads. The main goal of power system reliability assessment is to provide qualitative analysis and indices in power supply reliability for the operation and planning system. Two approaches analytical approach and MARKOV simulation approaches are used to calculate the reliability indices. The reliability index is computed based on the available data. In general, reliability is the probability that a component or system will perform a required function for a given period, when used under stated operating condition. HMM is unique in that it decomposes protection system, and individual protection devices. This structure, which easily accommodates the effects of backup protection, fault isolation and load restoration, is compared to simpler reliability model. HMM is then used to assess the reliability of an existing utility distribution system and to explore the reliability impact of several design improvement options. Thus this research’ present a reliability assessment using the MARKOV method though there are other method such as MONTE CARLO and many others.