Effect of a Single Fault Passage Indicator Placement on Radial Distribution System Reliability under Two Weather Conditions

Abstract

The components in the overhead electrical network are continuously exposed to the physical environment of varying weather conditions. If the weather around an electrical network is normal and consistent throughout a certain period of time, then the weather can be modelled as normal or single weather (SW). However, in practice, the overhead electrical network is always subjected to varying weather conditions such as normal weather and adverse weather then the weather is modelled as two weather (TW) model. Adverse weather (AW) can cause significant physical damage to the components, resulting in higher average failure rates and longer durations for power restoration. Without considering the weather conditions, the reliability assessment of the overhead electric power distribution system can be over-optimistic, and influence the planning and design decisions. The investigation of system reliability under two weather conditions provides the effect of percentage failures that occurs in severe weather conditions on average interruption duration per customer per year and the amount of energy not supplied per customer per year. This paper evaluates the reliability of a radial distribution system (RDS) considering single weather and two weather conditions. Further, the effect of the fault passage indicator placement on RDS under SW and TW is also evaluated. A fault passage indicator (FPI) is a device that indicates and communicates the fault's location to the operator hence reducing the fault identification time and improving the system reliability by reducing the outage duration time.