Prioritization of Aging Underground Power Distribution Cables for Maintenance Activities

Identifying the most important components for system reliability helps asset managers to optimize maintenance and replacement plans. In that context, this paper proposes a novel methodology to rank underground power distribution cables considering their age-related repairable failures and their loading conditions. A non-homogeneous Poisson process is used to model age-related repairable failures of cables and to incorporate the loading conditions into the prioritization process. Cables are ranked by using a component-level index that quantifies the impact of their failures (random and age-related) on the system interruption cost. A power distribution system with 64 underground power cable sections was used to assess the methodology. Results suggest that the importance of underground power cables can change when their age-related repairable failures and their loading levels are incorporated into the ranking lists.