Originally posted by: Jjoshua2
So I am doing a technical writing class, and I am going to write a paper on "How to increase the reliability of the power grid", but first I need to have someone answer a survey. I'm not entirely sure of the best 10 questions to ask, so you can modify them a bit, but I hope someone will help me with this.
How reliable is the power grid?
Depends on your definition of an outage....Is an outage where customers out or sections of line which we are able to switch around to cause no customer outage?
The company I work for and most probably uses 3 Indexes which they measure themselves by which are the following:
CAIDI Customer Average Interruption Duration Index
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SAIFI System Average Interruption Frequency Index
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SAIDI System Average Interruption Duration Index
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The links give an industrial wide median for these values.
What are the causes of downtime/power outages?
Downtime for the grid is mainly due to weather events, as for most upgrades etc... we are able to switch the customer load to cause minimal amounts of outages..
What is the estimated dollars lost caused annually by power losses?
Power loses from what outages, line loss, or equipment losses?
Outages cost for storms are millions a year, some of the most recent bigger storms calls for crews of a few thousand people working around the clock, and usually require hotel stays etc...for the out of town crews. On top of food etc...
Line loss/equipment I never really looked into but its there...
What are steps to increase uptime?
Sensationalizing circuits as much as possible is about the only way to increase uptime, but there are prices to be paid when doing this.
Also Smart Grid will eventually be a self healing circuit. Meaning that once a fault occurs the circuit will try and pinpoint the problem and switch out the section automatically to clear the fault and leave as few people as they can out. Really quiet interesting stuff, but it is just now in the developmental phases.
Are power companies pursuing these options or are they prohibitive?
Covered above....
What are some challenges facing the power industry?
Smart Grid is going to be the driving factor in the next 20 years.
Also Distributive Generation will be another side I see growing. This is where you are producing power at your house with Solar Panels, Wind Mills, etc...
What do you see in the industries future?
Producing safe and reliable power.
What have been the largest/costliest power outages in history?
?? Not a power grid historian....
How is network theory applied to the power grid?
Not sure what network theory you are really talking about the most basic of circuits have switches where we can get our power from different sources, then on the circuit it self you have fuses which once blown they are out for good, then you have reclosers which will take a fault shut it self off and then try and turn back on to see if the fault has cleared (Tree limb or Animal). You try and have fuses on every tap of the circuit to protect the main line. You also try and have a reclosers inline to sensationalize the main line to protect that.
Some of the bigger cities have power networks examples would be New York City, which I have few little knowledge on and couldn't really tell you much about it.
Transmission side which may be what you are really looking for I have little knowledge of it as well so....
Would an advance in network theory increase reliability cost effectively?
Probably not.
If anyone would care to answer these questions, I would be very grateful, and you can use Google too I guess, but I am supposed to be surveying a field person or expert.
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