Financial planning for the preventive maintenance of the power distribution systems' critical components using the reliability-centered approach

Among different maintenance strategies that exist for power distribution systems, the Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) strategy attempts to introduce a structured framework for planning maintenance programs by relying on network reliability studies and cost/benefit considerations. For the implementation of the RCM strategy, the electricity distribution companies try to optimally utilize the existing financial resources in order to reduce the maintenance costs and improve the reliability of the network. The aim of this paper is to present a practical method for devising an appropriate maintenance strategy for network elements and for preventive maintenance budget planning, with the goal of improving the system reliability and reducing the maintenance costs. In the proposed method, the critical outage causes of the distribution system are determined on the basis of cost and reliability criteria, by the Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. Then, the optimum preventive maintenance budget is calculated by obtaining the cost functions of the critical elements and optimizing the overall cost function. In this investigation, the medium voltage distribution network of the “Haft Tir” district in Tehran has been chosen for the implementation of the proposed RCM strategy.   Key words: Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), preventive maintenance (PM), technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), power distribution system.