9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

A Probabilistic Approach for Animal-Caused Outages in Overhead Distribution Systems

Swati Sahai, Member, IEEE, and Anil Pahwa, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract-- Faults caused by animals are a significant factor in the reliability of distribution systems. Examination of historical data on outages recorded by a utility in Kansas showed that the occurrences of animal-caused faults, most of which are caused by squirrels, are dependent on weather conditions and the time of the year. It was observed that the majority of animal-caused outages take place on fair weather days, which are the days with temperature between 40 degrees F and 85 degrees F with no other weather activity. Also, the breeding cycle and behavioral patterns of squirrels over the year has a strong correlation with the animal-caused outages in different months of the year. Population density of squirrels will have an influence on the number of outages caused by animals in overhead distribution systems, but reliable data on animal population density could not be found, thus an adequate direct relationship could not be established. In this paper, a Bayesian model is constructed for prediction of animal-caused outages in overhead distribution systems given the type of month and the number of fair weather days per week. The model uses historical data for training purposes and predicts the number of animal-caused outages per week given a combination of month type and number of fair weather days per week. A confidence interval is built around the predicted values of animal-caused outages, and the percentage of observed values lying within the confidence limits are computed in order to obtain accuracy of the predictions. Also, the timesequences of monthly averaged predictions are compared with the observed values. The model is illustrated with seven years of data obtained for a service territory of a utility in Kansas. Index TermsBayesian network model, failure rate prediction, overhead power distribution feeders, power distribution reliability.

Utilities use historical outage data to compute reliability indices and make operation and maintenance decisions to improve reliability of the system. Increased computational power has allowed use of proactive methods of finding distribution system reliability. These methods allow identification of less reliable parts of the system for improvements in advance rather than waiting for the fault to take place. These factors have been addressed in several papers. Specifically, vegetation and tree related failures are discussed in [4 6], lightning related failures are discussed in [7, 8], and animal related failures are discussed in [9]. In this paper, failures in overhead distribution systems caused by animals are examined. Occurrence of faults due to animals in different weather conditions as well as at different times of the year, are investigated. Based on this investigation, a mathematical cause and effect relationship is developed between weather and behavioral patterns of animals, and animal-caused outages. A Bayesian model is built to represent the cause-effect relationship and for prediction of faults due to animals. If the observed number of faults in a period falls within the confidence bounds, the utilities dont need any action. However, if the observed number of faults is higher than the upper limit, the utilities need to do further examination to take corrective actions. II. DATA ANALYSIS Outages caused by different factors in the distribution system of Manhattan, Kansas in a period a five years from 1998 to 2002 are shown in Table I. Since animals contribute significantly to the total number of outages, which are 19.2 % of the outages, further examination of these outages is needed.
TABLE I OUTAGES IN MANHATTAN, KANSAS CAUSED BY DIFFERENT FACTORS IN A PERIOD OF 5 YEARS FROM 1998 TO 2002 Cause Weather Equipment Trees Animals Others Number of Outages 834 921 1245 836 522

I. INTRODUCTION

eliability of power distribution systems is greatly affected by faults occurring on them. The various factors causing power failures are intrinsic factors, such as age of equipment, manufacturing defects in equipment, size of conductors; external factors, such as trees, birds/animals, wind, lightning, ice; and human error factors, such as vehicular accidents, accidents by work crew, vandalism etc. [1 - 3]. __________________________________________________

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant ECS-0501288. Swati Sahai (e-mail: ssahai@iso-ne.com) is with New England ISO, Holyoke, MA and Anil Pahwa (e-mail: pahwa@ksu.edu) is with the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS.

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9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

Detailed investigation of data on animal-caused outages over a period of seven years (1998 to 2004) in Manhattan, Kansas showed that almost all the outages occurred on fair weather days [2]. Discussions with the utility engineers revealed that squirrels were responsible for almost all of the animal-caused outages. Fair weather days are days with minimum and maximum temperatures within 40 oF and 85 oF and no other weather activity. The animal-caused outages from the year 1998 to 2004 were aggregated on a monthly basis to find the pattern of the outages due to animals. Fig. 1 shows the total animal-caused failures categorized by month. This graph shows that the highest number of animal related outages took place in the month of October, which is followed by June, May, November and September. These are the months with most number of expected fair weather days. Also, in September and October, the squirrels are noticeably more active because during this time, they bury acorns and nuts for the winter [10]. The least number of faults due to animals happened in the months of February and March. February and March are usually cold months with less animal activity. Thus it is reasonable to expect lesser faults due to animals in these months. Low number of faults in April is a bit surprising because the weather becomes nice in April. However, breeding patterns of fox squirrels, which are more common in Kansas, explain the low occurrences of animal outages in this month. Fox squirrels usually mate in January and raise only one litter per year. They have gestation periods of about 44 to 45 days. The newborns arrive in March. So, there is less squirrel activity in April because the mother squirrels are busy taking care of the newborns. By May the newborns are grownup and also the weather becomes nice, increasing squirrel activity. July and August are very hot months and during these months less animal activity can be expected. December and January are normally very cold and have less animal activity. However, in some years the weather can stay quite nice in these months prompting more animal activity.

Bayesian network is a graphical model that encodes a joint probability distribution over a set of random variables [11 14]. The model of Bayesian network is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) where each node represents a variable of the domain and contacts with its parents nodes. Each directed arc represents the relationships between the nodes. The degree of relationship of variables is represented by conditional probabilities between its parents nodes. The Bayesian network is described by two parameters - the graph structure and the conditional probability table associated with each node; both of which can be learned from the data. Since analysis of the outage data and behavioral patterns of squirrels revealed that animal caused outages in distribution systems are mostly influenced by fair weather days and the type of month, these two were used as the input variables for the model. A one-layer Bayesian network was created with three nodes representing the three variables type of month, fair weather days per week and number of animal caused outages per week. The relationship between the three variables is shown in the graph in Fig. 2.

MONTH TYPE (1,2,3)

FAIR WEATHER DAYS / WEEK LEVEL (1,2,3)

OUTAGE LEVEL (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12)

Fig. 2: One-layer Bayesian network for prediction of animal-caused outages

Number of Animal Outages (1998 to 2004)

250 200 150 100 50 0 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Month
Fig. 1: Number of failures due to animals in different months from the year 1998 to 2004

III. BAYESIAN NETWORK MODEL CONSTRUCTION A: Cause-Effect Model The occurrence of animal-caused outages in a distribution system is a random event, and can be most successfully modeled using probabilistic methods. This led us to use Bayesian network model for prediction of animal related faults on distribution feeders and distribution transformers.

Since the month type and number of fair weather days in a week are mutually independent, and directly influence the number of animal caused outages, they are treated as parent nodes or cause in the Bayesian model. The number of animal caused outages is the child node or the outcome. The variables - month, number of fair weather days per week and the number of animal caused outages, are all classified into discrete levels. This is done primarily because a discrete Bayesian model is simple to build and easy to handle. To make the model as accurate as possible, the data needs to be examined carefully to get the best classifications. All the points in one level of the parent or input nodes should have similar influences on the outcome of the event and the different levels should be as distinct as possible. Also, each combination of the input should have sufficient number of data entries associated with it. The classification of the output or the child node should be done so as to have as many levels as possible, with relevant number of data entries in each level. The input variable month signifies the behavioral patterns of squirrels at different times of the year. As discussed in section A, the squirrel activity in the months of February, March and April is the minimum. Hence, these months have been grouped together and classified as month Type 1. The squirrel activity in the very hot months of July and August and

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9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

the very cold months of December and January is moderate. Hence, these months have been grouped together and classified as month Type 2. The squirrels are most active in the months of May and June, and September, October and November. So, these months have been grouped together and classified as month Type 3. For uniformity and ease of classification of data, each month is considered to be composed of exactly four weeks. Since a month can have 28, 29, 30 or 31 days, one week in our model can have seven or eight days, depending upon the month to which they belong to. The numbers of fair weather days per week were computed for the seven years, starting from the year 1998 to 2004. The weather information, obtained from Kansas State University Weather Services, was used to determine these days. Weeks with zero number of fair weather day, are classified as Level 1 of fair weather days per week assuming they will have least impact on animal caused outages. Weeks with one to three fair weather days have been classified as Level 2. The weeks in which four to seven (or eight) days are fair weather days, will have the most impact on animal caused outages and have been classified as Level 3. The animal-caused outages per week in the Manhattan area were computed for the past seven years, which means a total of 336 weeks. Fig. 3 shows a histogram of animal caused outages per week in the Manhattan area. From this figure, we can see that there are many occurrences at the lower outage levels as compared to the higher ones. The outage range is from 0 to 30. Due to simplicity, animal caused outages per week have been classified into 12 levels instead of the possible 31 levels. The lower outage levels have a bin size of one to capture the higher frequency of lower numbers of animal-caused outages. Thus, the outage levels are classified as follows:
70

Three-month types and three levels of fair weather days per week, result in nine input states. The historical data is grouped into different levels as mentioned above. After classification, historical data is used to learn the parameters of the model. B. Conditional Probability Table The conditional probability table gives the probability of occurrence of each outage level given a month type and a level of fair weather day per week, that is, P (Outage Level = i Month Type = j, Fair Weather Level = k) where i = 1,,12, j =1,2,3 and k = 1,2,3. The next step is determination of the Conditional Probability Table for the Bayesian model. Since the graph structure is fully known, we have used maximum likelihood estimation to learn the values in the Conditional Probability Table with fully observed historical data. The input states are tabulated in Table II and the learned conditional probabilities are listed in Table III.
TABLE II
INPUT STATES FOR THE BAYESIAN MODEL

Input State 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Month Type 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3

Level for Fair Weather Days/Week 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3

Number of Training Cases 40 77 14 26 26 54 18 9 72

Outage Level 1: 0 Animal Caused Outage /Week Outage Level 2: 1 Animal Caused Outage /Week Outage Level 3: 2 Animal Caused Outages /Week Outage Level 4: 3 Animal Caused Outages /Week Outage Level 5: 4 Animal Caused Outages /Week Outage Level 6: 5 Animal Caused Outages /Week Outage Level 7: 6 Animal Caused Outages /Week Outage Level 8: 7 Animal Caused Outages /Week Outage Level 9: 8 Animal Caused Outages /Week Outage Level 10: 9 ~ 14 Animal-Caused Outages / Week Outage Level 11: 15 ~ 20 Animal Caused Outages /Week Outage Level 12: 21 ~ 30 Animal Caused Outages /Week
60 50 40 30 20 10 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30

TABLE III CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY TABLE OF THE BAYESIAN MODEL FOR MANHATTAN Input State 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Outage Level 5 6 7 8 .08 0 0 0 .05 .05 .04 .04 .21 0 .07 .14 .04 .04 .04 0 .04 .12 .08 .08 .17 .11 .09 .09 .11 .17 0 0 .11 0 .11 0 .10 .19 .10 .07

1 .38 .09 0 .23 .04 .06 .17 .33 .03

2 .15 .23 0 .23 .23 .06 .17 0 .07

3 .25 .22 .29 .27 .19 .13 .22 .11 .07

4 .15 .22 .07 .15 .19 .06 .17 .22 .11

9 0 .04 .14 0 0 .06 0 .11 .07

10 0 .01 .07 0 .04 .15 0 0 .10

11 0 0 0 0 0 .02 0 0 .04

12 0 0 0 0 0 .02 0 0 .06

Number of outages
Fig. 3: Histogram of animal-caused outages per week in the Manhattan area

A close observation of the conditional probability table gives an idea about the impact of month and number of fair weather days per week on the number of animal-caused outages per week. The zeros in the first row show impact of unfavorable months and weather conditions for animal-caused outages. This suggests that if the month is of type 1 and there are no fair weather days in a week, we should only expect a very low number of animal-caused outages. In contrast, state 9 has a favorable month for animal activities and higher number of fair weather days and thus probability of higher number of outages. A good conditional probability table is the key for accurate prediction in a Bayesian model. To accomplish this, we should have sufficient training data associated with each

Number of weeks

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9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

input state. This would guarantee statistical significance leading to the determination of correct conditional probability distributions of outage levels given an input state. Secondly, the classification of each level in an input state should be as distinct as possible in order to get a progressive increasing or decreasing trend in prediction. Finally, more levels of output would lead to increase in accuracy of prediction though it would result in a much sparser and bigger conditional probability table. IV. EVALUATION AND VALIDATION OF THE BAYESIAN MODEL A. Model Performance In this section, the performance of the Bayesian model is analyzed. Each outage level can be characterized by their median values. The median values for the outage levels are tabulated in Table IV.
TABLE IV MEDIAN VALUE OF OUTAGES PER WEEK FOR EACH OUTAGE LEVEL Outage Level Median 1 0 2 1 3 2 4 3 5 4 6 5 7 6 8 7 9 8 10 11.5 11 17.5 12 25.5

in the levels of fair weather days per week, there is a slight inconsistency when moving from input state 5 to input state 8. This contradiction might be the result of insufficient training data set corresponding to input state 8. State 8 has only 9 training data points, which is much lower than other states. B. Confidence Interval Since an input state represents a range of different values for month and number of fair weather days, and is only a rough classification of the effects of month and fair weather days on animal-caused outages, the model is expected to have errors in prediction and we should find a range of values within which the actual numbers of animal outages are expected to lie. In order to get confidence intervals for the expected number of outages, we have used a method assuming that the outage events in each input state are Poisson distributed. The reasoning behind using Poisson distributed outage events is that within most input states larger number of outages are taking place in the lower outage levels. Also, the counting property of outage events makes it intuitive to use Poisson distribution method for calculating the confidence intervals for expected number of animal-outages in each input state. For Poisson distribution of outage events within each input state, the variance for sample means is equal to the expected number of outages. The approximate upper limits for 95% confidence are the smallest integer X such that the Poisson cumulative distribution function evaluated at X equals or exceeds 95%. Table V gives the upper limits on expected number of animal-caused outages in each input level at 95 % confidence with Poisson distribution. The lower limits are assumed to be zeros to take into account the random occurrences of zeros in each input state. The upper limits give us a range in which the actual observed values are expected to lie, given the combination of the month type and the number of fair weather per week. The upper limits are significant because they provide a way for the utilities to reduce the number of animal-caused outages by taking preventive actions. C. Prediction based on Bayesian model Using confidence intervals with Poisson distributed outage events as calculated in Table VI, 313 out of 336 data entries, which amounts to 93.15% of the data set, had the observed values lying under the 95% upper limits. From the weekly predictions, the monthly average predicted numbers of outages (outages/week) are calculated by aggregating the expected number of animal-caused outages in Table V according to the percentages of their corresponding input states in each month. Fig. 4 shows the time sequences of monthly average observed and predicted numbers of outages (/week). As illustrated in this figure, the Bayesian model is prone to underestimation in the months of May, June, and September, October and November, when the numbers of animal-caused outages have been found to be high. Other than that the predicted values follow the observed values quite closely. Over-estimation in the 1998 and beginning of 1999 might be because of the fact that the utility started keeping records of the outages in the Manhattan area from the year

Expected number of animal-caused outages in each input state can be computed as shown, E(number of animal-caused outagesinput state j) =

P(outage level kinput state j) x Median(outage level k)

k=1

12

where, E (number of animal-caused outagesinput state j) is the expected number of animal-caused outages in input state j, j = 1,,9; P (outage level k input state j) is the conditional probability of the occurrence of outage level k given input state j from Table III and Median (outage level k) is the median of the outage level k, k=1,,12, which is available in Table IV. Expected number of animal-caused outages in each input state is shown in Table V.
TABLE V EXPECTED NUMBERS OF ANIMAL-CAUSED OUTAGES IN EACH INPUT STATE AND 95% UPPER LIMIT FOR MANHATTAN Input State 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Month Type 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 Level for Fair Weather Days/Week 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 Expected number of animal outages per week 1.4000 2.7727 5.0357 1.8077 3.3654 5.8519 2.3889 2.8889 6.7917 95% upper limits 5 6 11 5 8 11 6 6 12

From Table V, it is apparent that the expected numbers of animal caused outages show an increasing trend with the increase of month type from 1 to 3. Though the expected numbers of animal caused outages also increase with increase

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9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

1998, and their outage recording system might not have been functioning fully in the initial years. Root mean square error (RMSE) for the monthly average prediction is 2.265. This relatively higher value of RMSE is because of the fact that we have only 336 data points to train the model and also the Bayesian model does not predict the peaks in the observed data points very well. The reason behind the inaccurate prediction of peak points is because of fewer data points in the extreme outage ranges; the conditional probabilities associated with them are lower due to statistical insignificance. This coupled with the fact that we are using the median values for characterizing an outage range; the higher observed values of the outages are not predicted accurately in the model. There is no standard way to get confidence intervals for monthly average predictions in the Bayesian model. However, to get an idea of the possible upper limits of the monthly predictions, the 95% upper limits for the expected number of animal-caused outages in Table V are used as the alternative expected number of outages. The time sequence plot for 95% upper limits is shown in Fig. 5.
Predicted Values Monthly Average Number of Outages (/week)
20

D. Model Validation The Bayesian model is validated using outage data from Lawrence, another city in Kansas. Fig. 6 shows the histogram of animal caused outages per week in the Lawrence area from 1998 to 2004. From this figure we can see that the outage distribution in the Lawrence area is nearly the same as Manhattan. So, we have used the same outage bins for Lawrence as Manhattan except the last outage bin, which is from 21 to 25, and not 21 to 30. This is because the outage range for Lawrence is from 0 to 25. Table VI gives the conditional probability table based on observations and Table VII gives the expected number of animal outages and 95% upper limit in each input state for Lawrence as computed by the Bayesian model. Using confidence intervals with Poisson distributed outage events, 320 out of 336 data entries, which amounts to 95.24% of the data set, had the observed values lying under the 95% upper limits. Fig. 7 shows the time sequence plots of predicted and observed values and Fig. 8 shows plots of the 95% upper limits of monthly predictions for Lawrence and the observed values.
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Observed Values

Number of weeks

30 25 20 15 10 5 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

15 10 5

Number of Outages
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Fig. 6: Histogram of animal caused outages per week in the Lawrence area TABLE VI CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY TABLE OF THE BAYESIAN MODEL FOR LAWRENCE Input State 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Outage Level 5 6 7 8 .10 .03 .03 0 .08 .11 .16 .11 0 .08 0 .23 .20 .07 .07 .13 .05 .14 .14 .14 .07 .05 .07 0 .09 .22 .04 .09 .25 .08 0 .08 .05 .02 .05 .08

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Fig. 4: Time sequences of monthly average observed and predicted number of outages (outages/week) for Manhattan
Possible Predicted Values Monthly Average Number of Outages (/week)
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9 0 .06 0 0 .19 .12 .04 .17 .16

10 0 .13 .62 .03 .19 .37 0 .17 .29

11 0 0 .08 0 .03 .21 0 0 .27

12 0 0 0 0 0 .07 0 0 .04

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TABLE VII EXPECTED NUMBERS OF ANIMAL-CAUSED OUTAGES IN EACH INPUT STATE AND 95% UPPER LIMIT FOR LAWRENCE Input State 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Month Type 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 Level for Fair Weather Days/Week 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 Expected number of animal outages per week 2.1613 5.1905 10.4231 3.7167 7.0811 11.5465 3.6957 5.5833 11.4583 95% upper limits 6 11 17 8 13 18 8 11 18

Month

Fig. 5: Time sequence of monthly average observations and upper limit of expected number of failures with Poisson distribution and 95% confidence for Manhattan

Comparison of the upper limit of monthly average predicted values and observed values show that 97.6% of the data set has the observed values lying under the 95% upper limits. Thus, it can be said that see monthly average predictions are better than weekly predictions because of aggregation.

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9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

Predicted Values Monthly Average Number of Outages (/week)

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0 Jul-98 Jul-99 Jul-00 Jul-01 Jul-02 Jul-03 Jan-98 Jan-99 Jan-00 Jan-01 Jan-02 Jan-03 Jan-04 Jul-04

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Fig. 7: Time sequence of monthly average observations and upper limit of expected number of failures with Poisson distribution and 95% confidence for Lawrence
Possible Predicted Values Monthly Average Number of Animal Outages (/week)
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the Bayesian model, time-series models and other statistical models, such as Poisson regression, can be tried for prediction of animal-caused outages in overhead distribution systems. Additional work will also include testing of model with more data available in the future and addition of other causal factors like tree density. Testing of the model with future data will give an idea about robustness of the model. Predictive reliability assessment is very important for the utilities to develop an operation and maintenance plan to provide high level of service reliability to the customers. Since the failure events follow a random process, which is influenced by the environmental factors, it is not possible to exactly predict the number of failure. Therefore, it is necessary to define a statistical confidence region for the predictions. The utilities need to take action only if the observed number of failures is above the upper limit of the confidence band. VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors would like to thank Westar Energy, Topeka, KS for providing the outage data and Mary Knapp of State Climate Office at Kansas State University for providing the weather data. VII. REFERENCES

Observed Values

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Fig. 8: Time sequence of monthly average observations and upper limit of expected number of failures with Poisson distribution and 95% confidence for Lawrence

V. CONCLUSION It was observed that most of the animal related outages take place during fair weather conditions. Animal failures have a cyclic pattern with more outages in periods from May to June and from September to November. The behavioral patterns of animals as characterized by the month type, play a significant role in the animal-caused outages in overhead distribution systems. The Bayesian model constructed for Manhattan, Kansas gives the relationship between the causes, weather and month type and the effect, animal-caused outages. The relationship is in the form of conditional probability table. The prediction as given by the model has more than 90% of the observed values lying within the 95% confidence limits. The model was validated with data from Lawrence, Kansas and it was found that the model performs well for Lawrence too. Currently, the model is being tested for data from other cities in Kansas. Results of this study will be presented in the future. The Bayesian model is not able to predict the peak values in many cases because of insufficiency of training data in the input states corresponding to peak conditions. Modifications to the model will be investigated to address this problem. Different classification for month type and number of fair weather days per week can be tried. More levels for the outages can be tried for more accurate predictions. Apart from

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[13] S.-Z. Zhang, H. Yu, H. Ding, N.-H. Yang and X.-K. Wang, An Application of Online Learning Algorithm for Bayesian Network Parameter, Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, vol.1, Nov. 2003, pp. 153-156. [14] K. Murphy, A Brief Introduction to Graphical Models and Bayesian Networks, 1998, http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Bayes/bayes.html as retrieved on Mar. 19, 2005 at 10:40:49 GMT.

VIII. BIOGRAPHIES
Swati Sahai completed BS(Honors) from D.D.U. Gorakhpur University, India and her MS from Kansas State University. She is currently working as Engineer at ISO, New England, Holyoke, MA. She is a member of IEEE. Anil Pahwa received the B.E. (honors) degree in Electrical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, India in 1975, the M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Maine in 1979, and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 1983. Since 1983 he has been with Kansas State University where presently he is Professor and Interim Head in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. He worked at ABB-ETI in Raleigh, NC during sabbatical from August 1999 to August 2000. His research interests include distribution automation, distribution system planning and analysis, distribution system reliability, and intelligent computational methods for distribution system applications. He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and ASEE.

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