Abstract

This paper presents an extensive analysis of air blast circuit

breaker outages on the Hydro One Transmission System. The
aim of the study was to determine the dependencies of breaker
failure rates with respect to age, voltage level, manufacturer and
operating interventions. Both forced and planned outages were
examined. The statistical data base contains 6337 air blast circuit
breaker outages on the Hydro One Transmission System.
Results are reported in this paper.
Key words: air blast breakers, outages, failure rates.
I. INTRODUCTION
In an effort to maximize equipment reliability and
minimize asset life cycle costs, Hydro One Networks Inc. has
adopted a risk-based approach to optimize the timing of
investment and operating interventions to supplement more
traditional engineering studies. The risk of asset condition
deterioration and wear out failures increases as equipment
approaches the end of its useful service life. The rationale and
timing of investment decisions in anticipation of this end of
life has traditionally been left to engineering judgment. This
may result in higher costs to the utility and its customers if
investments are not optimally timed, i.e. made too early,
results in higher interest payments; made too late results in
failure costs. With an aging asset infrastructure, it becomes
increasingly critical to identify equipment bath-tub curves or
hazard functions of major asset classes and to understand the
risks and influence of critical variables on equipment failure
rates during the useful service life of an asset. The risk based
approach models the underlying distribution of failures or
bath-tub curve of each asset class to allow Hydro One
Networks Inc. to optimize the risk cost function in its decision
making process.
Traditionally, equipment failure rates are computed by
dividing the number of outages by the equipment-years
considered in the studies. The forced and planned outages are
normally considered in this analysis and failure and
maintenance rates are assumed to be constant throughout the
equipment life. However, many factors influence equipment
failure and maintenance rates including, equipment age,
utilization, voltage level, manufacturer and maintenance
intensity. In order to understand how these factors, referred
here to as descriptive variables, affect equipment
performance, Hydro One collected outage statistics on their
Air Blast Circuit (ABCB) breakers over the period of 1990 to
2001. The authors were then given the task of performing
statistical analysis of this data. The aim of the analysis was to
correlate the relationship of various parameters on the
probability distribution of equipment time to failure and its
failure rate. Some surprising results of these studies are
summarized in this paper.
II. THE BREAKER POPULATION
An Excel file with 6,337 records of the ABCB breaker
outages during the 12-year period was prepared. This record
spans the performance of 318 breakers over 3971 breaker-
years.. The demographics of the current population of the
ABCB breakers in-service on the transmission system are
shown in Figures 1 and 2.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55
Age
N
u
m
b
e
r
<50 kV 115 230 500

Figure 1. In-Service Airblast Circuit Breaker Demographics by voltage
level
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55
Age
N
u
m
b
e
r
OEM1 OEM2 OEM3

Figure 2 In-Service Airblast Circuit Breaker Demographics by
manufacturer
GEORGE ANDERS, FELLOW IEEE HENRYK MACIEJEWSKI BRUNO JESUS FARUQ REMTULLA
Analysis of Failure Rates of Air Blast Breakers
As A Function of Age And Usage
G. Anders is with Kinectrics Inc. in Toronto, email:
george.anders@kinectrics.com
H. Maciejewski is with the Technical University of Wroclaw, email:
hmac@ict.pwr.wroc.pl.
B. Jesus is with Hydro One Networks, email:b jesus@hydroone.com
F. Remtulla is with Hydro One Networks, email
faruq.remtulla@hydroone.com.
0-7803-7967-5/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE
Paper accepted for presentation at 2003 IEEE Bologna Power Tech Conference, June 23th-26th, Bologna, Italy

The average age of ABCBs on the system is 32.3 years.
These demographics highlight the following facts that will
affect the future management of ABCBs:
1. The overall population is well past a breakers midlife of
20
1
years and is fast approaching the manufacturers
specified design end-of-life of 40 years.
2. 28 breakers are already greater than 40 years of age.
3. In order to keep the age of these breakers below 40 years,
28 breakers would need to be replaced immediately with
an additional 12 breakers being replaced annually.
4. If 50 years of age is used as the trigger, then 4 breakers
would need to be replaced immediately with an additional
11 breakers being replaced annually.

ABCBs also normally require a mid-life overhaul, as
specified by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM).
Therefore, at about 20 years of age, major maintenance of
auxiliary systems and main systems, as deemed appropriate at
the time is carried out. Hydro One relies on performance and
condition information to trigger mid-life overhaul work on its
fleet of ABCBs. This mid-life overhaul is required to restore
breaker reliability and design functionality for the duration of
the expected useful life; it does not extend the ABCBs
expected life beyond its normal design life or re-set its age to
zero.
III. HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE
A. Performance trends
ABCB equipment reliability performance can be measured
in terms of frequency of outages (events/unit/year), average
duration of outages (hours/event), and equipment
unavailability (% of time breaker cannot be used in a year).
These three key performance indicators can be examined on
the basis of age, voltage and original equipment manufacturer.
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Year
N
u
m
b
e
r

o
f

O
u
t
a
g
e
s
Planned Forced
Fgiure 3 Annual number of ABCB outages

ABCB equipment reliability analysis was carried out based
on ABCB historical performance information of forced and
planned outages over the period 1990 2001. The results of
this analysis are summarized below for all forced and planned
outage causes and are illustrated in Figures 3 5. The

1
Based on information provided by original equipment manufacturers of
circuit breakers.
following comments can be made.
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
45000
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Year
D
u
r
a
t
i
o
n

(
h
r
s
)
Planned Forced

Figure 4 Annual duration of ABCB outages

0
0.002
0.004
0.006
0.008
0.01
0.012
0.014
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Year
(
%
)
Planned Forced

Figure 5 Annual ABCB unavailability

1. The number of forced outages from all causes (i.e. main
power equipment, terminal equipment, adverse
environment, human element, foreign interference, non-
power equipment) remains constant throughout the period
at about 100 outages/year. This is equivalent to a failure
rate of about 0.35 Outages/year.
2. Planned outages occur at approximately three times the
rate of forced outages. This high number of planned
outages is dominated by routine/testing activities at about
eight times as often as corrective outages occur.
3. After 1998, the frequency and duration of planned outages
dropped to its lowest level in 10 years resulting in a
corresponding decrease in ABCB unavailability. An
explanation for this trend is the implementation of the
Asset Management Model, which was introduced in 1998.
B. Outage root causes
The equipment database classifies each forced and planned
outage by the root cause as listed in Table 1. Non-Power
Equipment forced outages is the primary cause of ABCB
forced outages. These outages are associated with ABCB
external auxiliary systems such as High Pressure Air (HPA)
Systems and Protection & Control (P&C) Systems.
This is primary driver of the level of maintenance carried
out on ABCBs (e.g. repairing HPA system air leaks), but not a
primary driver for ABCB replacement the O&M costs of
repairing these systems are about two orders of magnitude less
than the cost of replacing the main ABCB.
Main Power Equipment outages are integral to the ABCB
itself and reflective of deterioration of breaker condition.
Therefore, ABCB historical forced outage performance will
focus on Main Power Equipment outages only, as the other
forced outage root causes do not drive the need for breaker
replacement.

Table 1: Root causes of outages
C. Forced outages
1) Main Power Equipment
Main Power Equipment forced outages are classified by
failures associated with the following ABCB sub-component
systems: bushing, operating mechanism, interrupter,
insulation, auxiliary, and sub-component. The frequency and
duration of ABCB main power equipment failures are shown
in Figures 6 and 7, respectively with the horizontal line
denoting the average value.
The following observations can be made from Figures 6
and 7.
The frequency of Main Power Equipment forced outages
ranges from a high of 0.11 outages/yr in 1992 and 2000 to
a low of 0.04 outages/yr in 2001 with an average of 0.074
outages/yr. Based on Canadian Electricity Association
(CEA) report on Forced Outage Performance of
Transmission Equipment for the Period January 1, 1996 to
December 31, 2000, Networks integral ABCB outage
rates are consistent with other Canadian utilities.
The main cause of Main Power Equipment outages are
associated with the integral ABCB sub-components and
auxiliary systems. These account for an average of about
14 incidents per year or 57% of the average annual forced
outage incidents over the study period.

0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
0.12
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
F
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y

(
O
c
c
/
Y
e
a
r
)
Bushing Op. Mechanism Interrupter
Insulation Auxiliary Subcomponents

Figure 6 Frequency of main power equipment forced outages
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
D
u
r
a
t
i
o
n

(
h
r
s
)
Bushing Op. Mechanism Interrupter
Insulation Auxiliary Subcomponents
Figure 7 Duration of main power equipment forced outages

Operating mechanism and interrupter related outages
together appear to contribute about 33% of the remaining
forced outages; and bushing and insulation failures
contribute the remaining 10% and do not appear to be of
recent concern.
The duration of Main Power Equipment outages is on
average about 2600 hrs / yr and varies significantly from
about 6800 hrs in 1991 to the recent low of about 735 hrs
in 2001. The duration depends on a number of factors,
including:
1. Spare parts availability e.g. a failed bushing that is
not in stock may take weeks for delivery and
replacement.
2. Outage cause - it takes longer to replace a major
integral component (e.g. bushing, interrupter,
operating mechanism) than an integral sub-
component or auxiliary system.
3. Field crew priorities in addressing an ABCB outage
since ABCBs are all connected in a redundant supply
to bulk electricity stations (i.e. diameter breakers) and
to DESN stations (transformer and bus-tie breakers),
the failed ABCB can be quickly isolated and power
re-routed with minimal disruption to the system and
Forced Outages (FO)
Root Causes
No. of
Outages
% of
Forced
Outages
1. Main Power Equipment 317 30.19%
2. Terminal Power Equipment 114 10.86%
3. Adverse Environment 5 0.48%
4. Human Element 27 2.57%
5. Foreign Interference 1 0.10%
6. Non-Power Equipment 586 55.81%
TOTAL 1050 100%
Planned Outages (PO)
Root Causes
No. of
Outages
% of
Planned
Outages
1. Construction 354 7.03%
2. Maintenance 3117 61.86%
3. Repair 488 9.68%
4. Testing 1043 20.70%
5. Investigation 37 0.73%

TOTAL 5039 100%


to Customers. Thus, the priority to address an ABCB
outage may be relaxed to deal with outages that are
directly affecting Customers.
The next step in the analysis was to determine the
probability distribution of the time between outages. Several
studies were performed. The parameter of interest is the
number of repairs performed on the breakers. The data was
divided into three classes: (1) breakers with up to one repair,
(2) breakers with two repairs, and (3) breakers with 3 or more
repairs. Figure 8 shows the plot of the time to failure for
forced internal outages on a log-log scale. The parallel
straight lines on this graph indicate that the Weibull
distribution is well applicable in this case.
Another parameter of interest is the hazard function for the
three groups identified above. A hazard function ( ) h t gives
the probability that the equipment will fail in the next time
interval t given that it survived up to the time t. The relevant
plots are shown in Figure 9 with the vertical axis representing
the double log of the survival function. We can observe that in
the case of one or no repairs, the hazard function is almost
constant. In the other two cases, the hazard function declines
with time. A decreasing hazard rate may be interpreted as the
longer the ABCB survives without an outage, the lower its
probability of failure will be. In all the graphs showing the
hazard function, the data after about 3600 days should be
taken with caution because the total study period is about 11
years.
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5
Log of time between outages (days)
L
o
g

N
e
g
a
t
i
v
e

L
o
g

S
D
F
<=1 repair 2 repairs >=3 repairs

Figure 8 Log-log plot of times to failure for internal forced outages for three
groups of components

The analysis shows that a growing number of repairs in the
lifetime of a breaker changes the distribution of time between
subsequent failures.
In the ideal (but perhaps unrealistic) scenario when a repair
reverts a breaker to the as-new state, the distribution of time
between failures for each grouping (i.e. 1 repair, 2 repairs, and
3 repairs) should remain about the same. This, however, was
not the case, the results in Figure 8 clearly show that the
distribution of the time to failure and the hazard rate
significantly depend on the number of repairs recorded for a
breaker: especially for times <1500 days. A rule that may be
applied is, the more repairs that have been recorded, the
higher the hazard rate will be observed.
0
0.0005
0.001
0.0015
0.002
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
time between outages (days)
H
a
z
a
r
d

F
u
n
c
t
i
o
n
<=1 repair 2 repairs >=3 repairs

Figure 9. Hazard function for three groups of breaker outages.
The application of the techniques to compute the hazard
rates described in the paper pertains to non repairable systems.
In particular, the survival function and the hazard function are
by definition applicable to non repairable components. The
way we apply them is as follows.
1. We look at the random variable representing times to
failure.
2. We assume that after each repair, the component is as
good as new.
Under these assumptions, we can apply the techniques
pertinent to the non repairable systems. This is a gross
simplification of the actual situation because after repair only
seldom the component is as good as new, but a common
practice in the analysis of the outage statistics. The study
reported above looked specifically at the effect of the number
of repairs on the equipment hazard rate.
2) Forced Outages by Voltage Class
An analysis was carried out to examine the ABCB times to
failure by voltage class i.e. <115 kV, 230 kV, and 500 kV, as
shown in Figures 10 and 11.
-1
-0.8
-0.6
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5
Log of ttime between outages (days)
L
o
g

N
e
g
a
t
i
v
e

L
o
g

S
D
F
low voltage medium voltage high voltage

Figure10: Log-log graph of time to failure for three different voltage levels
From Figure 10, we can conclude that for all voltage levels
the distributions of times between failures are similar. These
distributions tend to follow a straight line indicating that the
time to failure can be modeled using a Weibull distribution.

Figure 11 indicates that the hazard function falls sharply for
times between outage of up to about 1000 days. For times
between 1000 and 2000 days, low voltage breakers exhibit
significantly lower hazard then other groups (by a factor of 2).
However, this is mainly attributed to the rare number of
failures associated with a small population of breakers (i.e.
52). For times exceeding 2000 days, all groups exhibit about
the same constant hazard of about 0.0003. No data is
available for the low and high voltage breakers for times
between outages longer than about 10 years.

0
0.00025
0.0005
0.00075
0.001
0.00125
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
time between outages
H
a
z
a
r
d

F
u
n
c
t
i
o
n
low voltage medium voltage high voltage


Figure 11 Hazard function for forced outages for three voltage levels.

3) Forced Outages by Original Equipment Manufacturer
An analysis was also carried out to examine the forced
outage performance of ABCBs by original equipment
manufacturer (OEM) for each voltage class. The results of
this analysis are shown in Table 2 and summarized below:
1. Very rare LV and 115 kV ABCB forced outages may be
attributed to the negligible maintenance regime on these
breakers. In addition, the population of these breakers is
very small, i.e. forty-five LV and eleven 115 kV ABCBs.

Forced Outage Rate (outages/year)
OEM LV 115 230 500 Total
Company 1 0.02 0.00 0.45 0.07 0.27
Company 2 0.00 0.00 0.28 0.67 0.26
Company 3 0.00 0.00 0.25 0.41 0.37

Table 2 Forced outage rates for different manufacturers.

2. Company 1 equipment are the worst performing 230 kV
breakers on the system with a forced outage rate that is
about 60% to 80%, greater than for the other two
manufacturers. This is of concern because Company 1
breakers are also the oldest breakers on the system.
3. Company 2 breakers are the worst performing 500 kV
breakers on the system, but this performance is skewed by
the very small sample i.e. only 2x500 kV ABCBs remain
in-service. If this performance is discounted, Company 3
has the worst performing 500 kV breakers at about 6 times
the rate of Company 1 and about 1.6 times worse than their
230kV class cousins.
D. Planned Outages
Planned outages are classified by corrective maintenance
to address an unforeseen ABCB problem/deficiency; planned
maintenance to carry out ABCB preventative/routine
maintenance; or construction to isolate the ABCB to
facilitate maintenance or installation of an adjacent piece of
equipment. The frequency and duration of ABCB planned
outages for each of these causes are shown in Figures 12 and
13.
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
F
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y

(
O
u
t
a
g
e
s
/
y
r
)
Maintenance Corrective Construction Average
Figure 12 Frequency of ABCBs planned outages
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
45000
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
D
u
r
a
t
i
o
n

(
H
r
s
)
Maintenance Corrective Construction Average

Figure 13 Duration of ABCBs planned outages

The following observations can be made from Figures 12
and 13.
The frequency of planned outages has remained fairly
constant over the period at about 1.2 outage/yr/breaker.
This represents a planned outage rate that is approximately
10 times the rate of forced outages.
The drop in outages from 1997 2001 is mainly attributed
to implementation of the Centralized Asset Management
Model, implementation of preventative maintenance
optimization process and the removal of 32 ABCBs from
the system. This impact is amplified in Figure 13 that
shows approximately a 70% reduction in the duration of
total planned outages. Translated, this means that ABCBs
continue to be taken out for maintenance about once per

year, and the maintenance is now being done in about of
time that it used to take.
Routine maintenance outages, on average, account for
about 80% of the total planned outages. This is equivalent
to about 1.0 outage/yr/breaker.
Corrective maintenance outages account for about 10% of
the total planned outages. This is equivalent to about
0.1/outage/yr/breaker.
Construction outages are insignificant to the total number
of planned outages. An increase in these outages tend to
point out the years in which significant ABCB removals
have occurred, i.e. 1992 and 2000.
The outage duration contributions from planned
maintenance, corrective, and construction are very similar
to the proportions described above for the frequency of
planned interruptions i.e. 80%, 10% and negligible.
1) Corrective Maintenance Outages by Voltage Class
The time to failure and hazard function for each voltage
class of ABCBs was examined to further analyze the effect of
corrective maintenance outages. The results of this analysis
are summarized below and shown in Figures 14 and 15.
-2
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5
Log of time between outages (days)
L
o
g

N
e
g
a
t
i
v
e

L
o
g

S
D
F
low v oltage medium v oltage high v oltage

Figure 14 Log-log plot of Time to Failure of Corrective Maintenance
Outages by Voltage
0
0.0001
0.0002
0.0003
0.0004
0.0005
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
time between outages (days)
H
a
z
a
r
d

F
u
n
c
t
i
o
n

(
o
c
c
/
d
a
y
)
low v oltage medium v oltage high v oltage

Figure 15 Hazard Plot for Corrective Maintenance Outages by Voltage

The medium voltage breakers have the largest probability
of corrective outage.
For time between corrective outages <1000 days, the
hazard rate for all voltage classes drops significantly.
This means that if a breaker did not have a corrective
maintenance outage for about 3 years, its probability of
failure will be much lower than for a similar breaker that
recently had a such an outage.
After about three years of operation without a corrective
maintenance outage, the probability of such outage is
constant for all three voltage classes. There is no
recorded data beyond about 6 year between outages for
low and high voltage breakers.
The time between corrective maintenance outages can be
represented by a Weibull distribution for all voltage
classes.
2) Planned Outages by Original Equipment Manufacturer
An analysis was also carried out to examine the planned
outage performance of ABCBs by original equipment
manufacturer (OEM) for each voltage class. The results of
this analysis are summarized in Table 3.

Planned Outage Rate (outages/year)
OEM LV 115 230 500 Total
Company 1 0.02 0.00 1.48 0.33 0.87
Company 2 0.00 0.45 1.35 2.33 1.27
Company 3 0.00 0.00 0.50 1.63 1.35

Table 3 OEM Planned Outage Rates by Voltage

Company 1 breakers are the highest maintained 230 kV
breakers on the system with a planned outage rate that is about
10% to 300%, greater than the equipment of the other two
manufacturers. This may be appropriate given that the
Company 1 breakers are also the oldest breakers on the
system.
Company 2 and 3 equipment have the highest maintained
500 kV breakers on the system. These breakers require about
2 outages/yr for maintenance.
E. Performance By Age
An analysis was also carried out to examine the
performance of integral forced outages (i.e. Main Power
Equipment) and planned outages with respect to ABCB age.
The results are summarized below and shown in Figures 16-
21.
1) Results without explanatory variables
a) Failure rates (forced outages caused by main
equipment failures)
Figure 16 shows the number of breaker-years (i.e. the
number of breakers of a given age summed up over the period
1990 2001) and the number of integral (main power
equipment) forced outages for each age group.
Figure 17 shows the failure rate for this population. It
appears that the forced outage rate of ABCBs is fairly
independent of age and the value of 0.1 outages per year can
be used for the failure rate for all age groups.

0
50
100
150
200
250
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Age (years)
C
o
u
n
t
Breaker-years
No. of outages


Figure 16. Population information for forced outages due to internal failure

0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Age (years)
F
a
i
l
u
r

r
a
t
e

(
1
/
y
)

Figure 17. Forced outage rate as a function of age

b) Maintenance outages
Figures 18 and 19 show the population and maintenance
/planned outage rate information over the period 1990 - 2001.
In the case of maintenance outages there was one breaker that
when it was 8 years old, it had 4 maintenance outages in one
year. When the information for this breaker is ignored, the
maintenance rate for all breakers older than 10 years is
approximately the same and equal about 1 outage per year.
The counter-intuitive conclusion reached here is that
ABCB performance does not vary with age to about 40 years
of age. The forced outage rate remains constant at about 0.1
outages/yr. However, beyond 40 years, there is insufficient
performance data to accurately predict ABCB performance
deterioration trends that are consistent with their end of life
and last stage of the typical bath-tub curve.
The vital question then becomes, at what age will ABCB
performance begin to deteriorate and exhibit signs of the last
stage of the bath-tub curve?
2) Results with explanatory variables
Several studies were performed to see the effect of the
number of repairs, voltage level and the OEM on the failure
rate as a function of age. It is noted that outages involving a
population of one or two breakers of a given age were ignored
since any outage in such a group would skew the results.

0
50
100
150
200
250
300
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Age (years)
C
o
u
n
t
Breaker-years
No. of outages

Figure 18 Population information for maintenance outages
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
0 10 20 30 40 50
Age (years)
O
u
t
a
g
e

r
a
t
e

(
1
/
y
)

Figure 19 Maintenance outage rate

Figure 20 shows the integral (main power equipment)
failure rates by OEM. Company 1 breakers have the highest
failure rate with the average about 0.15 outages per year. This
group exhibits very high failure rate for equipment that is 16-
17 years old. Company 3 breakers have lowest failure rates up
to about age 34 when performance deteriorates significantly.
The maintenance outage rate for all OEMs is shown in
Figure 21. Company 3 has the highest maintenance rates with
the rate sharply increasing at about 30 years in service.

0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Age (years)
F
a
i
l
u
r
e

R
a
t
e

(
1
/
y
)
Company 1
Company 2
Company 3

Figure 20 Forced outage rate as a function of age


0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
9 19 29 39 49
Age (years)
O
u
t
a
g
e

R
a
t
e

(
1
/
y
)
Company1
Company2
Company3

Figure 21 Maintenance outage rate as a function of age
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In order to determine the parameters that play an important
role in characterizing the equipment failure rates, an extensive
statistical probabilistic analysis was undertaken on the
performance of Hydro Ones air blast circuit breakers.
Using the results of the probabilistic risk analysis, Hydro
One will be able to better predict equipment failure rates and
make better, more timely, investment decisions. This will help
to optimize asset life cycle costs while continuing to increase
its knowledge of the deterioration process of its assets.
This is the first study reported in the literature that looks at
detailed causes of the equipment outages. In addition to
forced and planned outage rates, that would usually be studied,
we have looked at the effect of age, manufacturer and the
voltage level on the computed indices. Several conclusions
drawn from this study confirm generally held views about
failure and maintenance rates. However, some conclusions
are not so obvious.
General conclusion about the ABCBs that emerged from
this study can be summarized as follows:
Failure rates as a function of age can be considered
constant for all voltage classes and all manufacturers for
the breakers under consideration.
The number of repairs has an effect on the performance of
the breakers. Equipment with more repairs tends to have
higher hazard rates. This means these breakers are more
likely to fail than the units with a smaller number of
outages.
The 230 kV breakers, which constituted the largest
sample in this study, exhibit somewhat higher hazard
rates for planned than the other two voltage levels.
There are substantial differences in maintenance and
failure rates between different manufacturers. The
breakers with the highest preventive maintenance rate
exhibit the smallest failure rate as a function of age.
The main cause of Main Power Equipment outages are
associated with the integral ABCB sub-components and
auxiliary systems. These account for an average of about
57% of the average annual forced outage incidents over
the study period.
Operating mechanism and interrupter related outages
appear to each contribute about 33% of the remaining
forced outages; and bushing and insulation failures
contribute the remaining 10% and do not appear to be of
recent concern.
Routine maintenance outages, on average, account for
about 80% of the total planned outages whereas corrective
maintenance outages account for about 10% of the total
planned outages. Construction outages are insignificant to
the total number of planned outages.
The outage duration contributions from planned
maintenance, corrective, and construction are very similar
to the proportions described above for the frequency of
planned interruptions i.e. 80%, 10% and negligible.
V. BIOGRAPHIES

George J. Anders (M74, SM84, F99)
received a M.Sc. degree in EE from Technical
University of Lodz in Poland in 1973, and an
M.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Ph.D. degree in
Power System Reliability from the Univ. of
Toronto in 1977 and 1980, respectively. Since
1975, he has been employed by Ontario Hydro
first as a System Design Engineer in
Transmission System Design Dept. of System
Planning Division and currently as a Principal
Engineer in Kinectrics Inc. (a successor company to Ontario Hydro
Technologies). Dr. Anders is the author of two books Probability Concepts
in Electric Power Systems", published by John Wiley & Sons, NY, 1990, and
Rating of Electric Power Cables, published by IEEE Press, New York, 1997
and McGraw-Hill, New York, 1998. He is a registered Professional Engineer
in the Province of Ontario.

Henryk Maciejewski received a M.Sc. degree
in Computer Engineering from Wroclaw
University of Technology, Poland in 1990, and
Ph.D. degree in Computer System Reliability from
Wroclaw University of Technology in 1998. In
1992-93 he was visiting researcher at Ontario
Hydro, Toronto, Canada; since 1993 he has been
with the Institute of Engineering Cybernetics,
Wroclaw University of Technology, initially as
research assistant, and since 1998 as assistant professor. Since 2002 he has
also been a lecturer in the Faculty of Software Engineering of the Technische
Fachhochschule Hagenberg, Austria. His research interests include data
mining technologies, statistical data analysis, probabilistic methods in
reliability, and parallel processing. He is author of more than 30 papers in
these areas.

Bruno Jesus received his B.A.Sc. degree
in Electrical Engineering from the University
of Toronto in 1987. He is a registered
Professional Engineer in the Province of
Ontario. He has been with Hydro One and
its predecessor, Ontario Hydro, for 15 years.
He is currently a Team Leader in the
Network Strategy Division responsible for developing customer and asset
strategies.

Faruq Remtulla received his Honors
Business Administration Degree from The
Richard Ivey School of Business in 2002. He
has been with Hydro One Inc. since
graduation and is currently working as a
Business Analyst in the Network Strategy
Division.