Condition based failure rate modeling for electric network components

This paper presents methodologies to estimate electric network component failure rates. A component is made of subcomponents and the failure of each subcomponent is feature dependent. Features are measurable or observable inputs, which can affect the life of one or more subcomponents. Failure statistics are usually available in the electric power industry for the component and its subcomponents. This paper shows how to use the failure statistics to obtain the failure rate of a particular component according to its real conditions. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate how the proposed methodologies are applied for failure rate estimation of power circuit breakers. The methodologies can be used for condition-based reliability analysis for electric power networks, in order to obtain an optimized maintenance strategy.