RELIABILITY BASED ASSET MANAGEMENT FOR INVESTMENT STRATEGIES AND DECISIONS

In Europe the electricity network business is facing large investment needs in the coming years, due to the increased requirements for quality as well as the fact that a major part of the electric network, especially in the rural areas, is coming to the end of its lifetime. There is therefore a need to be able to analyze the network in order to find the right locations for investment, i.e. the right parts of network to be renovated or reconstructed, in order to maximize the improvements of network with optimal investments. More and more attention is also put on the quality issues, minimizing outages. In order to be able to do the right decisions, all the possible known aspects should be taken into account, i.e. as many as possible information sources should be used. There are several sources of information available; Network information systems have been widely in use since 90's and there are national statistics available about outages and the reasons for them. Also condition information for network components have been collected for some years in many network companies. There has however not been any system in use utilizing the available data extensively in a way that support the decision making in network companies.To be used for the first order headings.