Optimal design method for BTB based on reliability and life cycle cost evaluation

A wide variety of configurations can be considered for a back-to-back (BTB) system. This paper presents a method for determining the optimal configuration taking into account both cost and reliability. System reliability is assessed on the basis of reliability engineering. The cost of damage generated at the time of outage is formalized based on system reliability and “life cycle cost” (LCC) of a system is defined as the sum of facility cost and outage-damage cost. The proposed method quantitatively assesses system configurations based on LCC, and determines the optimal configuration. In addition, to provide an example of the technique at work, we define a standard case in detail, apply the technique to it, and report on the optimal configuration so obtained