A method for age modeling of power system components based on experiences from the design process with the purpose of maintenance optimization

This paper introduces a first step towards establishing the effect of maintenance on component reliability. The concept of relative age is introduced and defined as well as a method to establish this relative age of electric power system components for the purpose of Maintenance optimization. The proposed method is demonstrated by modeling the relative age of a sub-component for a circuit breaker (CB). The modeling is based on the results from a major CB reliability study and a survey of all CB failures in the Swedish National Grid during the period from January 1/sup st/, 1999 to July 31/sup st/, 2003. The results from this application study show that it is possible to model the reliability of power system components by using results from development tests and calculations from the design process along with failure and maintenance data.