Regulation of quality of supply - An innovation driving force? Novel eqiupment for reducing customer´s interruption costs by bypassing switches during maintenance

Penalty schemes for customer´s interruption costs have been introduced in many countries to counteract the Distribution Network Owners (DNO) cost-cutting focus due to stricter revenue regulations. The Norwegian penalty scheme (CENS) include all sorts of interruptions, also planned interruptions due to maintenance activities, and hence the DNO´s have incentives in finding ways to prevent customers having their supply interrupted while maintenance is being carried out in the network. The paper describes an example of such an innovation, namely a novel patented method and equipment for bypassing switches while performing maintenance.