GA-BASED APPROACH FOR INSPECTION PRIORITIZATION IN ELECTRIC POWER DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS

Abstract

The increasing need of ensuring appropriate levels of reliability, profitability and consumer satisfaction drives utilities to develop strategies to identify aging assets through scheduled inspections. Nevertheless, as total inspection capability is limited by available budget number of maintenance teams, a strategy to allocate teams into “the most critical" segments of the grids is desirable. Nowadays, inspection scheduling is still performed based on personal experience and on automated spreadsheets. This paper proposes a GA-based approach to assess grids' parameters, define metazones (i.e., grid segments among protection devices) and prioritize those that further enhance power quality features. Results demonstrate that the prioritized metazones are feasible for real-life application in a comprehensive fashion.