Wind speed severity scale model applied to overhead line reliability simulation

Abstract Wind-induced failures on electrical networks has damaging effects on utilities’ reliability performance, especially those operating long feeders, mainly composed of overhead lines and exposed to different wind profiles along the feeder. Traditional reliability models rely on failure and repair rates to reproduce the interruption cycles of components and, during the planning phase, these are assumed constant over time and causeless. Therefore, wind-related failures and wind conditions that characterize the operation of a particular system are not fully addressed in the evaluation. The methodology proposed adopts an original 5-wind speed severity scale and presents a probabilistic wind model for reliability studies that takes advantage of the utility reliability and wind speed data to extract the overhead lines wind-related failure rates and, then, a simulation technique to reproduce the random behavior of the components is combined with a 10 min time-resolution wind speed time series to recreate the wind interference with the grid. This way, overhead lines and the overall reliability of the system is tested using historical wind speed time series instead of traditional weather models. Consequences of adverse wind periods in terms of repair times are addressed as well as regional effects of wind by emulating simultaneous wind profiles in the grid. Simulation outcomes for two systems demonstrate that the method proposed can be valuable when assessing the reliability of overhead lines, considering wind interference, making it suitable for reliability studies.