On Distribution Asset Management: Development of Replacement Strategies

Presented at IEEE PES PowerAfrica 2007 Conference and Exposition. ©2007 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/PESAFR.2007.4498062The components of electricity networks are ageing. It is expected that within a horizon of 15 years, the performance will deteriorate significantly, while the costs for operating the networks will increase enormously. The main problem is that a significant part of the population of the assets is installed in the same period, resulting in a highly concentrated number of failures in a short time. The currently applied replacement strategy has to be revisited, in order to accommodate the effects of ageing assets: higher maintenance costs, high failure rates, and a steep increase of capital expenditure (CAPEX).The work reported here was supported by a large number of utilities in North America and the US Department of Energy under award number DE-FC02-04CH11237

How Accuracy Impacts the Economic Benefit of Cable Diagnostic Programs

Presented at Fall 2007 PES-ICC Meeting.This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy under Award No DE-FC02-04CH1237 and CDFI

Selection: The Most Critical Part of Maintenance

Presented at Fall 2007 PES-ICC Meeting.This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy under Award No DE-FC02-04CH1237 and CDFI

Validating Cable "Diagnostic Tests"

Presented at Jicable '07.Diagnostic Techniques are increasingly employed by utilities to manage their infrastructure assets. These are sophisticated techniques being applied to complicated and diverse real world networks. Consequently there are many concerns that these techniques a) are not accurate and b) damage the system by, at the very least, robbing other areas of vitally short resources. Thus there is a compelling need to develop and deploy simple and robust analytical techniques that can address these problems. These evaluation approaches would then identify the effective programmes such that support could be strengthened to these areas, whilst minimizing the resources deployed on approaches that are ineffective

VLF Tests Conducted by NEETRAC as Part of the CDFI

Presented at the Fall 2007 PES-ICC meeting.This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy under Award No DE-FC02-04CH1237 and CDFI

Withstand Tests: More Than Meets the Eye

Presented at the Insulated Conductors Committee, San Antonio, Texas, October 26-29, 2008.This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy under Award No DE-FC02-04CH1237 and CDFI

Some Considerations on the Selection of Optimum Location, Timing, and Technique, for Diagnostic Tests

Presented at the IEEE Power Engineering Society 2008 General Meeting, Pittsburgh, July 20-24, 2008. ©2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/PES.2008.4596412The ageing of the electrical infrastructure is a growing concern for utilities, regulators and customers; and there is no doubt that addressing this problem will become an ever more important priority. Any solution will have to address three basic issues: firstly where is the optimum place and time to start, secondly what is the most appropriate suite of actions that can be taken and finally is the solution going to deliver the expected life. Diagnostic programs play an important part in the first and the third issues. In the first they may be able to guide the identification and prioritization of assets to be addressed; here they operate on the ageing population. The third issue benefits from diagnostics by using them as part of the assurance process that determines that the replacements / repairs have been effective. Addressing the ageing infrastructure is a large, complex and interacting challenge; this paper focuses on the first issue, namely how to select the appropriate locations, timing and technique.This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy under Award No DE-FC02-04CH1237 and the Utility and Manufacturing participants of the Cable Diagnostics Focused Initiative (CDFI)

Investigation of VLF Test Parameters

Presented at ICC Spring 2010 Subcommittee F - March 24, 2010

Experience of Withstand Testing of Cable Systems in the USA - B1-303

Presented at CIGRÉ - Session 2010 - Paris, 22-27 August, 2010.High voltage withstand tests are used within manufacturing plants to ensure the quality of completed cable system components from MV to EHV. Thus, it is quite natural for utilities to also use withstand tests as commissioning and maintenance tests for cable systems in the field. The goal of these tests is the same as in the factory test, namely to have any weak components of the cable system fail in a controlled manner, such that the minimum number of customers are affected. In fact a recent study has shown that withstand tests are among the most routinely employed diagnostic tests in the USA; this study has also shown that the most preferred withstand tests use Very Low Frequency (VLF: 0.02 to 0.1 Hz) AC methods