Smooth transition from time based maintenance to condition based maintenance strategies for electrical infrastrucutres

Physical assets in the electricity transmission and distribution networks are aging in such a complicated way that this process is difficult to fully reproduce in a laboratory environment. This leads to the underdevelopment of knowledge rules for diagnosis methods. In this paper, we interpret this underdevelopment as a "diagnosis error indicator" and integrate it with a simple reliability model of power cables. Based on the model, failures, replacements and diagnoses are simulated in order to understand the life cycle cost when time-based maintenance (TBM) or condition-based maintenance (CBM) is applied. The simulation results show that the profitability of CBM relies heavily on the readiness of knowledge rules. In the final conclusion, a "transitional" maintenance strategy is proposed for the initial stage of the application of diagnostic tools, in order to avoid the excessive cost of CBM caused by incomplete and unfinished knowledge rules.