Managing Aging TD Infrastructures by the Sustainable Point Method

摘要

Simple, approximate, and limited as the model described here is, it has proven quite useful for study of T&D infrastructure aging in utility systems in the Americas and Europe. In addition, the authors learned a good deal about equipment aging and what and how optimum asset management policies can target improvement and function in a practical manner. Important points in the work reported here are: 1, Aging reliability and financial impacts will not cause a sudden "shock" to a utility, but instead result in gradual, steady escalation in cost and service quality problems. 2. The method described here produces useful results even from the imperfect and incomplete data that many utilities have. 3. The theoretical existence of a sustainable point is useful in helping set up and calibrate a statistical model to a specific population based on historical utility records. 4. Sustainable age is a very useful concept in dealing with aging issues: it puts current age and trends due to aging in perspective. 5. Some, occasionally many, equipment categories in a power system may have sustainable ages far greater than their current average age. 6. Most "old" equipment still has many years of service left.