Reliability in Electrical Systems

By

Prof. Charles Manasseh M. Ondieki

 Reliable electrical power system
• Reliable electrical power system requires that designers minimize single point of
failures in the system. A single point of failure is a single point in the electrical
power system beyond which the electrical power system is down from the failed
piece of equipment or power supply.
• Adding redundancies to the electrical power system is usually an effective method
to minimize single point failures. This may involve addition of redundant power
sources, electrical distribution equipment, cable routing, etc.
• Ensuring reliable electrical power system at any organization requires careful
consideration of electrical reliability measures, eliminating single point of failures
with reasonable cost benefit returns.
• In addition to reliability requirements, electrical system at the organization facilities
must be scalable to facilitate future expansions, easy to operate and maintain for
the long period of continuous operations.
• Simply adding redundancies or selecting topology without due considerations of all
operational requirements may not meet the organization requirements.
 Procedure:
• First, designer must consult with all stakeholders to determine the value of uninterrupted
operations. Designers must establish a common ground about the reliability with all of the
stakeholders prior to selecting topology of electrical power distribution system and
measures to eliminate single point of failures.
• Second, designers must establish cost of the various alternate solutions with increasing level
of reliabilities so that stakeholders can select an appropriate electrical system that meets
the reliability requirements with least negative impact on budget.
• Finally, designers must:
• Choose a network architecture that strikes the right balance between risk mitigation and return on
investment (ROI)
• Select reliable equipment configured for each process and load
• Implement an appropriate maintenance policy with corrective, preventive, and predictive measures
• Install a power monitoring and control system with the following features, to help operators make the
right decisions and take the appropriate corrective actions:
o Real-time monitoring of the entire electrical network
o Alarming, data logging, event tracking, fault analysis, and root cause analysis
• New electrical systems must be scalable as well as compatible with the existing systems to
integrate seamlessly with the existing systems. New electrical power system should also
meet stringent criteria for reliability including elimination of single point of failures,
operability, and maintainability to ensure that designed system will operate for entire life of
the building.
 A Practical Guide for Electrical Reliability
• A short outage may not cause much trouble for a refrigerated storage facility,
but unplanned shutdowns may cost a lot of money.
• The questions engineers should always ask about their facilities are , “What is
the total cost of an outage at the facility?”, Does the facility meet “six nines”
availability criteria?, or What would a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) of
the electrical system tell about downtime?
• The Engineers should understand fully terms like “N+2,” “MTBF,” “failure
rate,” and “high nines of availability”.
 Reliability through good design
• Even though system design is typically not the direct cause of equipment failure or system
shutdown, design will have an effect on system availability and on the length of shutdowns when
they do occur.
• If the system has been designed with multiple redundancies, it can allow for maintenance outages
and can ride through equipment failures without resulting in an unplanned shutdown.
• Using common reliability analysis tools, the predicted reliability and availability of your electrical
system can be calculated.
• To provide continuous operation under all foreseeable circumstances, including utility outages and
equipment breakdown, you must design reliability into an electrical system.
• Investigating the number of redundancies designed into the electrical system is one of the
common analytical approaches. It identifies the normal source (N) and any redundant
circuits/sources or equipment that would provide alternate paths for electrical power to flow.
• A system with one redundant path would be termed an N+1 design. This would allow for one of
the paths to be de-energized for maintenance while the other is still energized, allowing
maintenance without system shutdown. If the system is designed with a normal path and two
alternate paths (N+2 design), one path could be down for maintenance, a failure could occur in a
second path, and ideally, the third path would supply power to the load without interruption. An
N+1 or N+2 assessment of a system can reveal single points of failure within the system.
Reliability through probabilistic risk assessment
• Performing a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is another way to
look at system reliability.
• Using the typical failure rate for a given type of equipment and the
mean time necessary to repair it, PRA looks at the probability of
failure of each type of electrical power equipment and, depending on
the number of redundancies built into system design, can be used to
predict availability, number of failures per year, and annual downtime.
 Quantifying system reliability
• To quantify system reliability, it's necessary to first define the term “loss of
power.” Many utilities don't keep records of service interruptions shorter
than one minute. Some don't keep records of those interruptions shorter
than five minutes. But for many critical facilities, even a five- or 10-second
outage would qualify as loss of power.
• Can reliability be quantified, not just estimated? Yes, but, first, you have to
decide what a “loss of power” is. Loss of power, not unreliability, is the
opposite side of electrical reliability.
• To put this in perspective, a facility experiencing an annual loss of power for
only 0.003% of the year is said to have 99.997% reliability. This sounds great
until you realize that 0.003% is 26 hours – more than one full day! – of lost
power. For nearly every facility today, this would be a disaster! Reliability can
be quantified…but is it a level you can live with?
• Keep in mind that historical data on past system downtime and the resulting
losses, plus other investigative records, are important to setting the
benchmarks used for quantifying electrical system reliability.
• Before performing a reliability analysis, you must understand and agree on
the circumstances that qualify as a power failure.
• Six nines of availability represents an average annual downtime of more than
30 seconds. While this may be an acceptable level of availability for many
facilities, it would be completely unacceptable for many data centers,
intensive care units, and other critical facilities that may expect seven, eight,
or nine nines of availability.
• If the cost of outages and estimated costs of various improvement projects
are known, it's possible (by multiplying the probability of failure and cost of
failure, and then subtracting that cost from the cost of each of the
improvement projects) to compare the relative merits of the current system
and each of the alternatives. You can then use this information to evaluate
return on investment (ROI).
• There are three principles of systems design in reliability engineering which can
help achieve high availability:
o Elimination of single points of failure. This means adding redundancy to the system so
that failure of a component does not mean failure of the entire system.
o Reliable crossover. In redundant systems, the crossover point itself tends to become a
single point of failure. Reliable systems must provide for reliable crossover.
o Detection of failures as they occur. If the two principles above are observed, then a user
may never see a failure – but the maintenance activity must.
• A distinction can be made between scheduled and unscheduled downtime.
Typically, scheduled downtime is a result of maintenance that is disruptive to
system operation and usually cannot be avoided with a currently installed
system design. Scheduled downtime events might include patches to system
software that require a reboot or system configuration changes that only take
effect upon a reboot.
• In general, scheduled downtime is usually the result of some logical,
management-initiated event. Unscheduled downtime events typically arise
from some physical event, such as a hardware or software failure or
environmental anomaly.
 Reliability through proper maintenance
• Maintenance clearly affects reliability. Failures increase when maintenance is
deferred or done poorly. Also, as soon as new equipment is installed, a
process of normal deterioration begins. Unchecked, the deterioration process
can cause malfunction or an electrical failure.
• It's important to establish an ongoing program designed to maintain an
acceptable level of reliability for the facility. You can greatly improve reliability
of electrical systems and equipment through proper maintenance practices
and procedures, starting with effective system startup and acceptance testing.
• When normal acceptance and start-up testing isn't performed (usually to save
money), the results can be disastrous. Perfectly good switchgear,
transformers, or other equipment can be “smoked” due to relatively small
installation errors. In other cases, the failures don't occur until months after
the facility has gone into operation and the warranties have expired. Loose
connections or insulation damage may not show up until more equipment
comes online and electrical loads increase.
• Acceptance and start-up testing also provides valuable baseline or
benchmark information that can be used later. Several good methods exist
for establishing maintenance programs designed to maximize reliability:
o NETA Maintenance Testing Standard (MTS) recommendations
o National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 70B Standard recommendations
o A reliability centered maintenance (RCM) assessment, which rigorously reviews
critical system and equipment failure effects and establishes appropriate condition
assessment tasks and maintenance activities for facilities or systems where reliability
is critical
• To get the full benefit of condition assessment and maintenance testing, you
should trend the results. Trending contact resistance, temperature,
insulation resistance, and other indicators will warn of deterioration and
often provides an opportunity for a planned shutdown for correction of the
problem before failure.
 Reliability through proper operations
• While the relationship between quality of maintenance and resulting
system reliability may be clear, the effect on reliability due to operations and
other actions of personnel may be less obvious.
• This area of human interaction and its effect on the electrical system is
considered the main source of unavailability. It has been estimated that
70% to 80% of all unplanned shutdowns are due to human error, meaning
that only 20% to 30% of unplanned shutdowns are due to equipment
malfunction or poor design.
• The condition and availability of facility records also influences reliability.
Out-of-date or non-existent drawings and instruction manuals can result in
unnecessary shutdowns, equipment failures, and even injuries, yet a
surprisingly low number of facilities rigorously maintain these crucial
documents in an accurate and up-to-date condition.
• Recognizing that equipment may fail or human error may occur, it's important that
you have documents and procedures in place to quickly enable recovery actions
and minimize the length of the shutdown. Such documents should include an up-
to-date single-line diagram of the system and a list of emergency contact numbers.
• Having at least a minimal number of spare parts for critical components is also
essential to system availability. Maintaining a spare parts inventory for
emergencies requires the implementation of a program that identifies which
equipment is critical and which spare parts are needed for emergency conditions.
Such a program should also involve periodic condition assessment of each of these
spare parts and regular updating of the inventory.
• Personnel training and detailed procedures for operation are essential. Procedures
at many data centers and other similar “critical facilities” or facilities with “critical
environments” require very detailed work procedures or scripts. These scripts must
be written and then reviewed, revised if necessary, and approved by all the
appropriate stakeholders, including engineering, maintenance, information
technology, construction, and operations and procurement, before any physical
work begins. The step-by-step work procedures must be followed without
exception.
• In a typical facility, operations usually have a larger effect on system reliability than
maintenance or system design. Table in the next slide provides a basic checklist
that can help identify areas that need to be evaluated.
 One step ahead
• You must design reliability into an electrical system to provide
continuous operation under all foreseeable circumstances, including
utility outages and equipment breakdown.
• Analyzing the number of redundancies designed into the electrical
system and conducting a PRA are two methods of looking at system
reliability.
• When considering the implications of reliability, you must remember that
reliability analysis should examine all three pillars of system reliability:
design, operations, and maintenance.
• To effectively examine the overall picture, try using an electrical
operations and maintenance checklist like the one shown in the table.
This checklist serves as a basic blueprint to identify areas in need of
evaluation, and when used in an actual working environment it should be
written and reviewed by all appropriate personnel in the facility.
Make the Right Choice: Know the Right Enclosure
Material for Your Application
• The enclosure material you select impacts the lifespan, functionality and
performance of the components inside. With numerous materials available,
what are the different protective advantages?
• In the "Selecting the Appropriate Materials for Industrial Enclosures" find out
the specific impact on your enclosure of:
o Environmental considerations
o Modifications
o Strength and Weight Choices
o Climate control requirements
• Select your enclosure with certainty, knowing you've chosen the right
material for the job.
 The High Cost of Unreliability
• Maintaining a reliable electrical system does cost money. But how does this
compare to the cost of an hour, a day – a week – of lost production?
• There are other potential costs for electrical unreliability. Valuable equipment can
be destroyed, personnel can be injured (or worse), customers can experience their
own financial catastrophe due to the loss of your products and service. Rarely is a
power outage a “small” incident.
• Main Factors of Reliability - Electrical system reliability is a function of three basic
factors:
o Design and installation, including protective device coordination and selective zones of
protection
o Proper preventive maintenance
o Proper system operations
• A poorly designed or installed system is unreliable from the start. Even good
systems begin to deteriorate as soon as they are put into service; poor
maintenance hastens this process. And studies show that roughly three-fourths of
all unplanned production shutdowns are due to human errors.
 The Benefits of Reliability
• Because reliability can be quantified and loss-of-power costs can be calculated,
both numbers help determine ROI on projects designed to improve reliability.
Generally, in today’s electrically dependent world, improving electrical reliability
yields far more benefits – financial and otherwise – than the costs of
implementation.
• Important Reliability Terms:
• Availability – The probability that the system will operate as designed under specific
conditions, expressed as a percentage (e.g., 99% availability).
• Critical loss of power – A loss of electrical power for any time period that poses a threat to the
three critical Ps: product, property, and people.
• Mean time between failure (MTBF) – The average time between when a piece of electrical
equipment breaks down and when it breaks down again.
• Mean time between replacements (MTBR) – For electrical equipment, the average time
between complete replacements of specific equipment.
• Mean time to repair (MTTR) – The average time between when a piece of electrical
equipment breaks down, and when it can be repaired and put back in service.
• N+ – A method of identifying an electrical system’s redundancy, or ability to
cope with a power loss. An N+1 system has one redundant path that will
energize during a power loss, an N+2 system has two such paths, etc.
• Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) – A statistical analysis of an electrical
system that attempts to answer three questions: What can go wrong? How
serious could the impact be? How likely is this to happen?
• What does "Reliability" mean in Power System? As the name clearly suggests
“Reliability “means “the quality of being trustworthy”. Electrical systems are
not exception to this definition. Lesser the number of system outages of the
Power supply, more reliable the system is.
• Why Reliability? Ideally, electricity should be available to every customer all
the time, no exceptions. But the scenario is different in the real world. So we
tend to measure number of times the outage occurs which is inversely
proportional to reliability. For exact formula, you can refer any power System
book, i have just given you a simple explanation.
Example: The task of power system is to provide all customers with continuous,
quality qualified electricity. Power system reliability, can list into 2 kind:
oAdequacy- refers to the power system that has enough power generation
capacity and enough transmission capacity, at any time and can satisfy the
requirement of the user on peak; this is the characterization of the steady
state performance of power grid;
oSafety- refers to the power system in the safety of the accident situation
and avoid a chain reaction and won't cause out of control and the ability of
blackouts.
• The simplest definition for reliability is power that's there when it's needed.
Power quality can be defined as the degree to which power supplied by the
utility conforms to "pure" sinusoidal waveforms of exactly 60 cycles(or 50
cycles) per second.
• The availability factor of a power plant is the amount of time that it is able to
produce electricity over a certain period, divided by the amount of the time in
the period. Occasions where only partial capacity is available may or may not
be deducted.