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Overhead Powerlines outage/interruption rates

KillBill7

Electrical
Feb 10, 2017
60
Can someone point me to the industry references for the typical outage rates for overhead powerlines? I am performing the reliability assessment study for our distribution lines and would like to have a reference to benchmark against.
 
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The US Energy Information Administration [US EIA] has a "Annual Electric Power Industry Report" (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/) That I believe has all the annual SAIFI, SAIDI, CAIDI, etc. information from the reporting utilities.

Just in case you don't know how to calculate all the acronyms, Cooper Power has a document that does a good job explaining them. "Analysis of distribution system reliability and outage rates" [Reclosers Technical Data TD280026EN]

Hope this helps....
 
Comparing distribution lines to transmission lines is like comparing apples to oranges. Yes you can eat both of them, but they are not the same. First they are built to different standards, and have different costs per mile. If you want transmission reliability from a distribution line, then build it like a transmission line, including the right of way.
The issue here is that the spacing of the transmission system is greater than the distribution, which is a good deal of the increased reliability.
Also, transmission lines can be removed from service for weeks at a time, and not disrupt customers, giving time for greater maintenance.
 

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