Operational Availability Study in Transmission Lines. Case: PDVSA 115kV System

The present work establishes a methodology of study of the operational availability in 115 kV transmission lines, where the model of reliability is carried out from two points of view: under the design that determines the expected value of the failures, through simulations of surges with ATP before atmospheric discharges; and under the operational context, which is obtained through the denominated GRP model, applied to systems repairable considering the magnitude and order of occurrence of the record of failures, with both studies can be considered the actual value of the resistance of grounding. The maintainability model obeys the operational context according to record of interruptions (programmed and not programmed events). The study of operational availability, based on simulations of events with RAPTORreg under the models of operational context, includes the three areas that conform the electric system of PDVSA reporting 99.903% ~ 99.9 %, it satisfies at recommended practice