A new look at component maintenance practices and their effect on customer, station and system reliability

This paper introduces a new concept in the analysis of the effect of changes in maintenance policies on component, delivery point and bulk electric system reliability and associated costs. In the new approach several different analysis methods are combined, allowing for a comprehensive look at the effect of maintenance and reliability issues. This approach has been made possible by a development of a computer platform, which seamlessly links several complex computer programs. The concepts of the new approach and the implementation of the computer platform are presented in this paper. A numerical example illustrating implementation of these concepts is also presented.