Reliability Assessment of Radial distribution system incorporating weather effects

This paper presents a two-stage restoration technique incorporating weather effect considerations in reliability cost/worth evaluation of distribution systems. The weather conditions play a significant role on the reliability of a given power system leading to frequent incidence of failures to overhead system and their effectiveness. The physical stresses exerted by adverse weather increase the failure rates of transmission or distribution lines resulting in increased coincident failures of multiple circuits. Especially adverse weather can cause tremendous system damages and significantly strikes the reliability. Therefore, it is high time to address the issue by devising appropriate technique considering weather conditions. This paper briefly demonstrates the conventional two weather state models which are used for predictive reliability assessment incorporating normal and adverse weather conditions. The paper presents an approach to identify weather specific contributions to system reliability indices and illustrates the technique by utilizing a RBTS distribution system.