A test system for teaching overall power system reliability assessment

TLDR

Overall power system reliability evaluation aims to ensure acceptable customer service, a critical concern in today’s electric utility environment. The paper introduces and extends an educational test system for overall power system reliability evaluation to serve as a teaching tool at graduate and undergraduate levels. The extended test system incorporates generation, switching stations, transmission, sub‑transmission, and radial distribution networks, yet remains small enough for students to analyze by hand or with simple computer programs. The system and its associated concepts effectively support teaching power system reliability evaluation at both graduate and undergraduate levels.

Abstract

This paper presents the concept of overall power system reliability evaluation using an educational test system. The paper extends an existing test system by developing the necessary distribution and subtransmission networks. The extended test system has all the main facilities, such as generation, switching stations, transmission, sub-transmission and radial distribution networks found in a practical system. The test system, is however, sufficiently small that students can analyze it using hand calculations or by developing small computer programs to fully understand the reliability models and evaluation techniques. Overall power system reliability evaluation is concerned with providing acceptable customer service. This is an important concern in today's electric utility environment. This should therefore be an essential element in teaching power system reliability evaluation at either the graduate or undergraduate level, The extended test system presented in this paper and the concepts presented assist in satisfying this requirement.