Determination and Analysis of Data for Reliability Studies

Methods for transmission and distribution system reliability analysis currently being developed and used require that the expected values of component outage rates and outage durations be known. The paper describes how the required component parameters can be estimated from field data. Also described are methods of placing confidence limits on the parameters estimated. The methods presented were developed through a study of six years of field records provided by a utility company. Sample expected outage rates and outage durations for various components such as transmission lines, substation transformers, and circuit breakers are presented. Also presented are data which tend to confirm the distributional assumptions made in system reliability analysis methods.