A practical knowledge-based ranking approach to identify critical circuit breakers in large power systems

摘要

Condition assessment of circuit breakers (CBs) based on the installation of online monitoring systems (OLMs) is increasingly demanded by utilities. However, equipping all CBs with OLMs is neither technically nor economically feasible in a large power system. Therefore, the prioritization of the CBs is very important to identify critical components for equipping with such expensive tools (OLMs). The limited information along with the large size of power systems result in the inapplicability of the conventional ranking methods, in practice. To cope with this problem, this paper proposes a simple yet effective method based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for organizing the experts’ knowledge. The prioritization of the CBs has been solved as a multi-criteria decision-making problem (MCDM). The proper criteria have been defined to incorporate the practical concerns and reliability points regarding the limited data in a large scale system. In addition, in order to avoid the inconsistency of the decision matrix, the problem has been divided into three-level, i.e. ranking of substations, CBs in each substation, and CBs in the network. The applicability of the approach has been verified through successful implementation in a large-scale power transmission network to determine the critical substations and CBs for equipping with OLMs.