Impacts of quality improvement incentives on automation investments in the finnish new regulation model

During the second regulatory period of 2008–2011 incentives are included into the Finnish regulation model which allows higher profits for the network owners for properly allocated network investments leading to lower operation and interruption costs. In this paper the economical benefit and payback time of different automation schemes in two typical Finnish rural medium voltage (MV) distribution feeders are studied. The electricity distribution reliability indices, total outage cost, outage cost saving and payback time for different automation schemes with different numbers and locations of automated distribution substations were calculated.