CRITICAL ROLE OF FAILURE INVESTIGATIONS IN EFFECTIVE ASSET MANAGEMENT

摘要

Oman Electricity Transmission network (OETC) covers the whole Sultanate of Oman as operated byOman Electricity Transmission Company (OETC). The system is designed to be operated optimally,reliably at high level of security and is a regulated system. OETC is considering implementation ofgood Asset Management as strategic and technical focus that can lead to maintain, improve and sustainthe transmission network performance at the company strategic goals which shall achieve maximizingthe return of investment, corporate objectives (mission, vision and stakeholders requirements). Thispaper shows the beneficial of good Asset Management as it play critical role in Transmission NetworkPower Failure Investigation in order to avoid future interruption through a good learning lessons andimproving the feedback to operation and maintenance team and continuously insurance the volume ofwork and business are driven by effective and updated asset strategies and procedures. At times, assetfailures initiate cascading failures which may lead to blackout of the system as a whole, or to partialblackouts. Any blackout, partial or full, is of interest from a regulatory perspective, is associated tocredibility and reputation of the transmission companies, and is of importance to the nationalinfrastructure and the people of the country. Power failure incidents raise questions on thetransmission system security. Transmission system security fundamentally depends on the reliabilityof the assets. Effective asset management is the keys solution to system security. This paper outlinesthe requirements of good effective and dynamic asset management required at a power utility. Itdiscusses two major power failure incidents at Oman Electricity Transmission Company (OETC) andelaborates the hard lessons learned from the perspective of asset management. OETC initiated anindependent investigation into the root cause of these failures. The objective of the independentinvestigation was first of all to establish the root cause and determine the level of risk the network may face from potential similar failure modes and, secondly, to improve the present level of assetmanagement to establish a process of continual improvement based on lessons learned, irrespective ofregulatory requirements, ensure the continuous transmission power supply to OETC cutomers andestablish the feedback to operation and maintenance team to avoid the same in the future.Asset management is a process which inherently safeguards development and continual improvement.Such improvement is initiated by analysing present performance, including failure trends and failureroot causes. Implementation of an asset management process in a utility poses a number of challenges.One of the key challenges for a utility in the GCC region comes from the combination of present,aging, assets on the one hand, and the need for grid extension to accommodate substantial load growthon other hand. OETC is in the process of developing and implementing more modern assetmanagement processes and considers failure investigation a vital part of the asset managementprocess.This paper outlines how detailed investigation of power failures can beneficially influence assetmanagement processes and tools, support the drive for continuous improvement of network reliabilitythrough the implementation of lessons learned for the whole life cycle of physical assets. Theimplementation of such lessons may touch upon each partial process in the asset management chain(from design, specification, installation, commissioning and maintenance to risk identification andassessment, trend and root cause analysis, and quality assurance).