Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285

www.elsevier.com/locate/compeleceng

Radial distribution system reliability worth evaluation utilizing

the Monte Carlo simulation technique
Lalit Goel *, Yan Ou
School of EEE, Block S1, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639 798, Singapore
Received 5 March 1999; received in revised form 17 March 2000; accepted 30 March 2000

Abstract
Conventional reliability worth evaluation using analytical methods can only provide the expected or
average values of the worth indices. The actual shape of the statistical distributions associated with these
indices are generally not considered. This paper describes a Monte Carlo simulation approach to a complex
radial distribution system reliability worth evaluation. The results of a series of simulations studying the
impacts of various probability distributions for restoration times on load point expected cost, interrupted
energy assessment rate and their probability distributions are presented. Furthermore, dierent radial
system operating philosophies are incorporated in the analysis and their impacts are analyzed. 2001
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Reliability worth; Radial distribution system; Operating philosophies

1. Introduction

The basic function of an electric power system is to provide electric power and energy to its
customers at the lowest possible cost and at acceptable levels of reliability. But, these two aspects
are often in conict and balancing the high level of reliability and relatively low cost is a chal-
lenging problem for present power system planners and operators. The reliability evaluation
part of the problem has been well studied by many researchers during the last few decades. In
contrast, the ability to assess the worth of providing reliable service is not so well established, and

*
Corresponding author. Fax: +65-791-2687.
E-mail address: elkgoel@ntu.edu.sg (L. Goel).

0045-7906/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 4 5 - 7 9 0 6 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 2 0 - 3
274 L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285

considerable work is still required. Previous studies [1,2] indicate that distribution systems make a
signicant contribution to the overall customer reliability and most of the interruptions originate
in those segments of the distribution system, which are radially connected. This paper focuses on
reliability worth evaluation of radial distribution systems.
Direct evaluation of reliability worth is very dicult, and a practical alternative, which is being
widely utilized, is to evaluate the impacts and monetary losses incurred by customers due to
electric power supply failures. One convenient way to interpret customer interruption costs is in
the form of customer damage functions (CDF). The CDF can be determined for a given customer
type and aggregated to produce sector customer damage functions (SCDF) for various classes of
customers in the system. The SCDF values obtained from Canadian surveys [3] are utilized in all
the studies described in this paper. The expected cost (ECOST) of supply interruptions for each
load point and the interrupted energy assessment rate (IEAR) linked with system unreliability are
used as reliability worth indices in this paper.
Conventional reliability worth evaluation using analytical methods is normally only concerned
with evaluation of the expected or average value of a particular index. The actual shape of the
statistical distributions associated with these indices and the dispersion degree of the indices are
generally not considered. The failure times can normally be assumed to be exponentially dis-
tributed because the components operate in their useful or operating life periods. So, the com-
ponent failure rate of a radial system obeys a Poissons distribution. But the distributions of
practical restoration times are generally unknown, and dierent distributions of restoration times
can result in very dierent distributions of load point ECOST and IEAR. To investigate the re-
alistic characteristics of load point ECOST and IEAR, and achieve more detailed information,
Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) method is utilized in this paper to estimate load point ECOST,
IEAR and their probability distributions. The impacts of various distributions of component
parameters on these indices are analyzed, and the impacts of several radial system operating
philosophies on them are also presented and analyzed.

2. Simulation procedure

Various approaches can be followed when performing Monte Carlo simulation on electric
power systems. The approach utilized in this paper is the state duration sampling approach. The
rst step in this approach is obtaining the articial updown operating history of each individual
component. A program was developed to simulate the performance of the radial system of all the
ve buses of an educational power system designated as the RBTS [4]. Any combination of ex-
ponential, lognormal, normal or gamma distributions can be used to simulate the failure time (up
state duration time) and repair, replacement, switching time (down state duration time) in radial
distribution systems. The dierently distributed duration time can be generated using their cor-
responding conversion methods [5].
Once the history of each component has been obtained, the values of the three reliability indices
of each component can be calculated by
N
kP occ=year; 1
TTF
 L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285 275
P
TTR
r h=occ; 2
N

U kr h=year; 3
where k, r and U are component failure rate, outage time and annual unavailability, respectively,
N is the number of times this component fails during one simulation period, TTF is the up time of
the component during one simulation period and TTR is the total down time of the component.
The TTR will be equal to the total repair time of the component if it cannot be isolated and the
load point cannot be restored to service by switching. If the component can be isolated, the TTR
is the total time taken to restore the load point by switching (switching time).
Analyzing the eect of each component on the load point reliability indices, the load point
average failure rate k, average outage time r and average annual unavailability U can be deduced.
Combining the values of load points k, r, U, the data of SCDF and the load connected to the load
point, the corresponding load point ECOST and IEAR can be obtained using the following
equations:
X
N
ECOSTp Cj;p rj Lav;p kj k$=year; 4
j1

ECOSTp
IEARp PN $=kW h; 5
j1 Lav;p
Uj

where for load point p connected to the network, rj is outage time due to event j and kj , Uj are the
corresponding failure rate and annual unavailability, respectively. Cj;p is the cost of interruption
for load point p due to event j and Lav;p is the average connected load at load point p.
For each simulation period, the load point ECOST and IEAR values can be generated using the
above stated method. n times of simulation will produce a series of load point ECOST and IEAR
values from which the complete probability distributions, the average or expected values and the
variances can be determined.

3. Test system

A six-busbar test system designated as the RBTS is used to perform the simulation in this
paper. RBTS is an electric power system developed at the University of Saskatchewan for un-
derstanding and teaching the concepts associated with power system reliability evaluation. The
conguration of distribution networks of RBTS is given in Ref. [4], and the detailed radial systems
of dierent buses are shown in Refs. [4,6]. In order to provide continuity with the studies reported
in this paper, the complete single line diagram of the RBTS is shown in the Appendix A. The
reliability data, i.e. average failure rate k, average repair time and average switching time are listed
in Ref. [7]. The distribution transformer replacement time, the load connected to each load point,
feeder types and lengths are also presented in detail in Refs. [4,7]. The SCDF data utilized are
from Ref. [8]. It is assumed that there are no restrictions on load transfer, if alternative supply is
276 L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285

provided and that the fuses in the laterals are fully reliable if there are fuses. This paper presents
only the results of the case in which the main and lateral sections of the distribution system are
assumed to be composed of overhead lines. Moreover, the failure times of all components are
assumed to be exponentially distributed, because the components operate in their useful or op-
erating life periods.

4. Impacts of restoration time probability distributions

Due to the random nature of the distribution of restoration times (repair time or switching
time), it is inaccurate to use the average or expected value to calculate the load point ECOST and
IEAR. But the restoration times probability distributions are generally unknown, hence, there is
a need to investigate the impacts of various distributions of restoration times on load point
ECOST and IEAR.
Six combinations of repair time and switching time distributions were studied and are described
in this paper. They are listed as follows:

Category Repair time Switching time

Case 1 Exponential Exponential
Case 2 Exponential Lognormal
Case 3 Lognormal Exponential
Case 4 Gamma Exponential
Case 5 Normal Lognormal
Case 6 Lognormal Lognormal

The results of ECOST and IEAR are shown in Table 1, and the probability distributions of
ECOST and IEAR for load point 10 of Bus 2 are shown in Fig. 1. The radial system operating
philosophy used here is disconnects, fuses, alternative supply and transformer repair.
It can be seen from Table 1 that load point ECOST, IEAR and their variances for Cases 2 and 4
are quite comparable with those for Case 1 compared to Cases 3, 5 and 6 (which are much larger
than those for Case 1). However, the dierence between their ECOST, IEAR and their variances
for Cases 3, 5 and 6 and those for Case 1 are quite large. The variances for Cases 3, 5 and 6 are
also relatively larger than the corresponding values for Case 1.
The same situation can be observed from Fig. 1. It is obvious that the dispersion degree of
probability distributions of ECOST and IEAR for load point 10 of bus 2 for Cases 3, 5 and 6 are
quite larger than that for Cases 1, 2 and 4. Therefore, if the distributions of repair time and
switching time follow that of Cases 3, 5 and 6, it is inaccurate to use Case 1 to represent them, and
it is not sucient to utilize the expected values alone, but to evaluate the variances and the
probability distributions as well. It should be clearly appreciated that wide variations are found
for the index variances in some cases and it is only possible to determine using Monte Carlo
simulation the analytical techniques are unable to provide this kind of information. The ob-
jective of the studies reported in this paper is to show the capabilities of Monte Carlo simulation,
and to discuss the impacts of the various reinforcement options (cases) on not only the reliability
Table 1
Load point ECOST, IEAR and their variances (dierence is with respect to Case 1)
Case A ECOST IEAR r2 (ECOST) r2 (IEAR)
(k$/year) Dif. (%) ($/kW h) Dif. (%) Dif. (%) Dif. (%)

L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285

a
Bus2LP10 (res )
Case 1 12.995526 6.833751 0.240235 0.062953
Case 2 13.055265 0.46 6.825024 0.13 0.252698 5.19 0.074212 17.88
Case 3 16.798667 29.27 7.603690 11.27 9.355483 3794.30 0.276141 338.65
Case 4 13.071243 0.58 6.845867 0.18 0.729305 203.58 0.045383 27.91
Case 5 22.892532 76.16 8.630318 26.29 10.951326 4458.59 0.197546 213.80
Case 6 16.827464 29.49 7.557120 10.59 8.921165 3613.52 0.260562 313.90
Bus3LP14 (ob )
Case 1 22.286521 11.156981 0.056906 0.012267
Case 2 22.678410 1.76 11.236728 0.71 0.165678 191.14 0.018001 46.74
Case 3 24.353037 9.27 10.826531 2.96 5.675525 9873.51 0.078152 537.09
Case 4 22.389821 0.46 11.170642 0.12 0.719427 1164.24 0.010258 16.38
Case 5 28.651608 28.56 10.355891 7.18 5.661984 9849.71 0.035121 186.30
Case 6 24.908282 11.76 10.868183 2.59 5.590125 9723.44 0.062484 409.37
Bus4LP6 (comc )
Case 1 29.888133 20.706935 0.408464 0.167038
Case 2 30.036406 0.50 20.613986 0.45 0.376109 7.92 0.222286 33.08
Case 3 36.285116 21.40 21.937905 5.94 31.651008 7648.79 0.777211 365.29
Case 4 29.888238 0.00 20.675560 0.15 2.675978 555.13 0.127884 23.44
Case 5 46.812127 56.62 23.678394 14.35 31.548930 7623.80 0.494053 195.77
Case 6 37.085696 24.08 21.921523 5.87 31.353705 7576.00 0.766663 358.98
Bus5LP3 (G&Id )
Case 1 39.777345 17.846595 3.883519 0.755897
Case 2 39.688205 0.22 17.677995 0.94 3.898478 0.39 0.830342 9.85
Case 3 54.107602 36.03 20.606868 15.47 109.428373 2717.76 3.747608 395.78
Case 4 39.890268 0.28 17.640833 1.15 8.837026 127.55 0.435942 42.33
Case 5 78.873664 98.29 24.941214 39.75 183.941869 4636.47 3.526098 366.48
Case 6 54.247587 36.38 20.562759 15.22 135.325466 3384.61 4.419321 484.65
(continued on next page)

277
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L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285
Table 1 (continued)
Case A ECOST IEAR r2 (ECOST) r2 (IEAR)
(k$/year) Dif. (%) ($/kW h) Dif. (%) Dif. (%) Dif. (%)
e
Bus6LP20 (farm )
Case 1 1.100555 0.525431 0.000011 0.000000
Case 2 1.114518 1.27 0.525392 0.01 0.000028 154.55 0.000000 0.00
Case 3 1.249223 13.51 0.523810 0.31 0.005574 50572.73 0.000000 0.00
Case 4 1.101563 0.09 0.525393 0.01 0.000720 6445.45 0.000000 0.00
Case 5 1.504476 36.70 0.521866 0.68 0.005832 52918.18 0.000000 0.00
Case 6 1.270694 15.46 0.523756 0.32 0.005671 51454.55 0.000000 0.00
a
Residential user.
b
Oce user.
c
Commercial user.
d
Government and institutional user.
e
Farm user.
 L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285 279

Fig. 1. Probability distributions of ECOST and IEAR for load point 10 of Bus 2.

cost/worth indices but their variances as well. Index variance is a useful by-product of the sim-
ulation technique.

5. Impacts of dierent radial system operating philosophies

To investigate the importance of dierent components in radial system for reliability worth
evaluation, six cases of operating philosophies were considered:

Case A: disconnects, fuses, alternative supply and transformer repair (case used in Section 4);
Case B: no disconnects, no fuses, no alternative supply and transformer repair;
Case C: no disconnects, fuses, no alternative supply and transformer repair;
280 L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285

Case D: disconnects, no fuses, alternative supply and transformer repair;

Case E: disconnects, fuses, alternative supply and transformer replacement;
Case F: disconnects, no fuses, no alternative supply and transformer repair.

All the results given in this section assume that the probability distributions of repair time and
switching time are normal and exponential, respectively (Case 5 in Section 4), because the res-
toration times probability distributions are generally considered to be non-exponential. The re-
sults of ECOST, IEAR and their variances for these six cases are shown in Table 2. It can be seen

Table 2
Load point ECOST, IEAR and their variances for six operating philosophies
Load point ECOST (k$/year) IEAR ($/kW h) r2 (ECOST) r2 (IEAR)
Bus2LP10
Case A 22.892532 8.630318 10.95133 0.19755
Case B 128.983927 8.452361 355.75607 0.17566
Case C 23.768408 7.695523 11.24094 0.19697
Case D 23.573473 8.155243 12.07360 0.20199
Case E 0.918136 1.743694 0.00546 0.00098
Case F 22.761131 8.060993 10.85140 0.18852
Bus3LP7
Case A 20.408661 9.006284 8.52176 0.18363
Case B 136.636552 8.595154 420.08492 0.19086
Case C 21.679234 7.390032 8.74377 0.17775
Case D 40.518521 8.905416 35.40308 0.18876
Case E 0.548602 1.525949 0.00253 0.00170
Case F 19.929511 7.941219 8.29960 0.19231
Bus4LP11
Case A 20.480003 7.850786 8.71192 0.16215
Case B 149.453661 8.370059 506.64039 0.17945
Case C 22.305796 6.609492 9.75091 0.15044
Case D 21.351011 7.354272 9.64516 0.16924
Case E 0.711865 1.568613 0.00384 0.00108
Case F 21.566650 7.055412 10.66379 0.17696
Bus5LP14
Case A 48.321359 23.257506 40.22633 0.58849
Case B 292.484325 25.396030 1450.57807 0.58670
Case C 50.757513 21.630781 41.28106 0.64578
Case D 48.923325 22.294118 37.24980 0.56349
Case E 4.415511 10.101315 0.10000 0.00793
Case F 48.634720 22.262070 35.60423 0.52633
Bus6LP7
Case A 6.645771 7.750199 0.92484 0.17935
Case B 45.525620 8.248685 40.68587 0.16622
Case C 7.243349 6.448765 0.92134 0.14436
Case D 6.715338 7.222161 1.04890 0.18439
Case E 0.297339 1.581923 0.00065 0.00087
Case F 6.677220 7.198068 0.91008 0.16839
 L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285 281

that ECOST, IEAR and their variances for Case E have the smallest values among these cases.
For all the other ve cases, their IEARs and the variances of IEARs are quite comparable with
each other and much larger than those for Case E. For ECOST and its variance, Case B has the
largest value. All the other cases have quite smaller value of ECOST, among which, Case E has a
very small value.
To study the eect of dierent components in detail, the comparisons between two dierent
cases were conducted and the results are shown in Tables 39. It can be seen from Table 3 that the
load point ECOST, IEAR and their variance are reduced considerably in the case of transformer
replacement compared to the case of transformer repair. The minimum dierence is 56.57%. This
means that the operating philosophy of transformer replacement is a very eective method to
reduce ECOST, IEAR and their variances.
Table 4 shows the total eects of disconnects, fuse and alternative supply. It can be ob-
served that the existence of these components can decrease load point ECOST and its variance
largely (more than 82.25%). In contrast, the range of reducing IEAR and its variance is much
smaller.
By comparing Table 3 with Table 4, it can be seen that the eects of disconnects, fuses and
alternative supply are marginally smaller than the eect of transformer replacement in terms
of reducing ECOST and its variance, but the eects of disconnects, fuses and alternative sup-
ply on IEAR and its variance are quite negligible compared to the eect of transformer re-
placement.
The impact of fuses, disconnects and alternative supply alone are shown in Tables 57. The
existence of these three components alone can decrease ECOST and its variance considerably. But
their eects on IEAR and its variance are smaller.

Table 3
Comparison of Case A with Case E (transformer repairreplacement; dierence is with respect to Case A)
Load point ECOST (%) IEAR (%) r2 (%) ECOST r2 (%) IEAR
Bus2LP10 95.99 79.80 99.95 99.50
Bus3LP7 97.31 83.06 99.97 99.07
Bus4LP11 96.52 80.02 99.96 99.33
Bus5LP14 90.86 56.57 99.75 98.65
Bus6LP7 95.53 79.59 99.93 99.51

Table 4
Comparison of Case A with Case B (disconnects, fuse, alternative supplyno disconnects, no fuse, no alternative
supply; dierence is with respect to Case B)
Load point ECOST (%) IEAR (%) r2 (%) ECOST r2 (%) IEAR
Bus2LP10 82.25 2.11 96.92 12.46
Bus3LP7 85.06 4.78 97.97 3.79
Bus4LP11 86.30 6.20 98.28 9.64
Bus5LP14 83.48 8.42 97.23 0.30
Bus6LP7 85.40 6.04 97.73 7.90
282 L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285

Table 5
Comparison of Case B with Case C (fuseno fuse; no disconnects, no alternative supply; dierence is with respect to
Case B)
Load point ECOST (%) IEAR (%) r2 (%) ECOST r2 (%) IEAR
Bus2LP10 81.57 8.95 96.84 12.13
Bus3LP7 84.13 14.02 97.92 6.87
Bus4LP11 85.08 21.03 98.08 16.17
Bus5LP14 82.65 14.83 97.15 10.07
Bus6LP7 84.09 21.82 97.74 13.15

Table 6
Comparison of Case B with Case F (disconnectsno disconnects; no fuse, no alternative supply; dierence is with
respect to Case B)
Load point ECOST (%) IEAR (%) r2 (%) ECOST r2 (%) IEAR
Bus2LP10 82.35 4.63 96.95 7.32
Bus3LP7 85.41 7.61 98.02 0.76
Bus4LP11 85.57 15.71 97.90 1.39
Bus5LP14 83.37 12.34 97.55 10.29
Bus6LP7 85.33 12.74 97.76 1.31

Table 7
Comparison of Case D with Case F (alternative supplyno alternative supply; disconnects, no fuse; dierence is with
respect to Case F)
Load point ECOST (%) IEAR (%) r2 (%) ECOST r2 (%) IEAR
Bus2LP7 85.19 10.35 97.92 8.39
Bus3LP1 69.12 4.91 90.29 6.92
Bus4LP7 71.07 2.79 91.02 12.63
Bus5LP7 85.47 12.54 98.42 17.60
Bus6LP6 82.45 6.39 97.01 2.62

Table 8
Comparison of Case A with Case D (fuseno fuse; disconnects, alternative supply; dierence is with respect to Case D)
Load point ECOST (%) IEAR (%) r2 (%) ECOST r2 (%) IEAR
Bus2LP1 47.03 5.66 74.37 2.41
Bus3LP4 50.79 1.99 76.95 4.68
Bus4LP2 4.99 6.56 28.60 19.65
Bus5LP1 50.57 0.90 71.88 5.51
Bus6LP1 0.74 6.51 13.73 21.58

By comparing Table 8 with Table 9, it can be observed that the combined eects of disconnects
and alternative supply on ECOST and its variance are relatively smaller in contrast to the eect of
fuses.
 L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285 283

Table 9
Comparison of Case A with Case C (disconnects, alternative supplyno disconnects, no alternative supply; fuse,
transformer repair; dierence is with respect to Case C)
Load point ECOST (%) IEAR (%) r2 (%) ECOST r2 (%) IEAR
Bus2LP1 4.21 11.48 10.88 1.48
Bus3LP4 6.90 19.78 3.59 8.84
Bus4LP2 11.32 17.97 22.34 2.58
Bus5LP1 5.90 10.30 0.68 5.49
Bus6LP1 4.60 19.45 11.50 18.75

In general, among these six cases, only transformer replacement can reduce load point IEAR
and its variance greatly. To lower load point ECOST and its variance, transformer replacement is
the most eective way. The existence of disconnects, fuses and alternative supply can decrease
load point ECOST and its variance too, and the impact of fuses is the largest on ECOST and its
variance among these three components.
It should be clearly appreciated that the main objective of this paper is not to compare the
Monte Carlo simulation results with those from the analytical techniques, as that has been the
subject of extensive research in the literature [3,5,6,810]. It is now a known fact that Monte Carlo
simulation provides results that are quite comparable to those from the traditional analyti-
cal techniques (assuming exponential distributions). In the case of the test system used in this
paper, the RBTS, the results using analytical techniques are available in Refs. [410] and several
others.

6. Conclusions

This paper illustrates the application of a Monte Carlo simulation technique to reliability worth
evaluation in radial distribution systems. The distributions of component restoration times are
assumed to be exponential, normal, lognormal and gamma in this paper. The impact of six
combined distributions of repair time and switching time on two reliability worth indices, namely,
the ECOST and the IEAR, are presented and analyzed. The paper also presents the probability
distributions and the variances of load point ECOST and IEAR. Load point ECOST, IEAR and
their probability distributions and variances for some distributions of restoration times are
comparable with each other while others are not. Meanwhile, the changes in radial system op-
eration philosophy are modeled using the simulation method. The impacts of various compo-
nents and operating philosophies on ECOST, IEAR and their variances are also discussed in
this paper. The impact of fuses is higher than the impact of disconnects and alternative supply
on the load point ECOST and its variance. These components do not, however, signicantly
aect the IEAR. The impact of the low voltage transformer replacement is the greatest on
both the ECOST and IEAR probability distributions. The information obtained from these
studies can be utilized for electric power managers, planners and operators in objective decision
making.
284 L. Goel, Y. Ou / Computers and Electrical Engineering 27 (2001) 273285

Appendix A

The complete single line diagram of the RBTS is shown below.

References

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Lalit Goel was born in New Delhi, India, in 1960. He obtained his B. Tech. degree in electrical engineering from the Regional
Engineering College, Warangal, India in 1983. Between 1983 and 1988 he worked at various project sites in India for Engineers India
Limited, a premier engineering consultancy organization. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
University of Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1988 and 1991, respectively. His main research interests are power system planning and
reliability cost/benet evaluation of electric power systems. He joined the School of EEE at the Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore in 1991, where he is presently an associate professor. Dr. Goel is a senior member of the IEEE. He received the 1997 Teacher
of the Year Award for the School of EEE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dr Goel was the organizing chairman of the
1998 IEEE EMPD Conference in Singapore. He was also the vice-chairman of the IEEE Power Engineering Society's Winter Meeting
2000 held in Singapore in January 2000.

Yan Ou received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Xian Jiaotong University, People's Republic of China, in
1993 and 1996, respectively. She obtained her M.S. degree in power systems from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in
1999. She is currently a Ph.D. student in power systems reliability at Texas A&M University, USA.