APPLICATION OF CUSTOMER INTERRUPTION COSTS IN DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM RELIABILITY WORTH EVALUATION

Reliability cost/worth assessment is becoming an important aspect of power system planning and operation as it provides an opportunity to compare the worth of electric service reliability with the cost of providing that reliability, The interruption costs incurred by the customers (CIC) due to power supply interruptions can be used as surrogates in the reliability worth assessment of an electric power system. In order to determine an optimal and reasonable level of customer service, reliability cost/worth can be performed by calculating the costs associated with different system configurations and assessing the corresponding reliability worth. . The main objective of this research was to examine the. ability to perform reliability worth assessment by applying appropriate customer damage functions (CDF) at different load points in a distribution system. The reliability worthassessment was performed by linking distribution system predictive reliability indices with the customer interruption costs associatedWith power supply interruptions at the various load points. This thesis is concerned with the sensitivity analysis of the expected customer outage cost (BCOST) using both load point customer damage functions (LPCDF) and sector customer damage functions (SCDF). This thesis also illustrates the impact on the BCOST of selected distribution system .parameters using both LPCDF and SCDF. Customer damage functions utilized in the evaluation of BCOST can vary substantially due to the composition of the customers at the different load points in the system. Thel . sensitivity studies show that the BCOST is highly dependent on the actual customer composition. This thesis also illustrates the application of relevant customer damage functions to evaluate the BCaST on an actual distribution system feeder located in the\ City of Saskatoon. The evaluated BCOST using representative load point customer} damage functions at each individual load point provides the most realistic estimate of the expected customer cost This thesis illustrates that load point customer damage functions are important parameters in the evaluation of the BCOST in an actual distribution system.