كنفرانس بين المللی مهندسی صنايع و سيستم ها

صفحه اصلی / دوازدهمین كنفرانس بين المللی مهندسی صنايع و سيستم ها

Life Cycle Cost Analysis of Automation Switches in Electricity Distribution Networks: A Reliability-Oriented Investment Framework

نویسندگان :

Mohsen Kojury-naftchali¹

1- شرکت توزیع نیروی برق مازندران

کلمات کلیدی :

Asset management.،Life Cycle Cost Analysis،Reliability improvement،Distribution automation،Automation switch،electricity

چکیده :

Electricity distribution utilities are increasingly deploying automation switches to improve network reliability, reduce outage duration, and enable advanced smart grid functionalities. Although automated switches provide significant operational benefits, their deployment requires substantial investment in equipment, communication infrastructure, installation, maintenance, and lifecycle management. This paper proposes a comprehensive Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) framework for evaluating automation switch deployment in electricity distribution networks. The proposed methodology integrates investment cost, operation and maintenance cost, communication system cost, switching operation cost, reliability improvement benefits, and interruption cost reduction over the complete asset lifetime. The results demonstrate that although automation switches require higher initial investment, they provide significant lifecycle savings due to reduced outage duration, faster fault isolation, improved service restoration, and reduced customer interruption costs. Sensitivity analysis shows that the economic attractiveness of automation strongly depends on failure rates, customer interruption costs, switch installation cost, and network topology. The proposed framework provides distribution utilities with a practical decision-support methodology for determining optimal investment strategies for distribution automation systems.