Electrical Power and Energy Systems 42 (2012) 575582

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Electrical Power and Energy Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijepes

Fuse cutout allocation in radial distribution system considering the effect

of hidden failures
Mojtaba Gilvanejad a,b, Hossein Askarian Abyaneh a,, Kazem Mazlumi c
a
Department of Electrical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
b
Substation & Transmission Department, Niroo Research Institute, Tehran, Iran
c
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Among the several components of distribution systems, protection devices present a fundamental impor-
Received 23 May 2010 tance, since they aim at keeping the physical integrity not only of the system equipment, but also of the
Received in revised form 5 April 2012 electricians team and the population in general. One of the protective devices playing a vital role in over-
Accepted 20 April 2012
head distribution lines is fused cutout. At the era of privatized utilities, the protection devices should be
Available online 5 June 2012
allocated and coordinated optimally to reduce capital investments and the system outage costs. Amid this
situation, the mentioned type of the protection device (fuse cutout) has not been studied for economical
Keywords:
allocation up to now. In this paper, responding to this need, an accurate reliability model of fuse cutout
Fuse cutout
Hidden failure
containing hidden failures is gured out in the shape of a new Markov model. This model is used for eco-
Markov model nomical allocation of the fuse cutouts. On the basis of the proposed model, a methodology for economic
allocation of fuse cutouts is presented. This methodology involves the worth of energy not supplied (ENS)
of the network and makes a balance between the cost of fuse cutout installation and the benet of ENS
decrease because of the minimizing the faulty zone by using more fuse cutouts. The methodology is
tested on a sample distribution network as well as on IEEE 6-bus distribution test system (RBTS). More-
over, its capability on decision making about the fuse cutout placement and its simplicity for implement-
ing on MV overhead lines are displayed.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Protective systems are designed to recognize certain types of
power system disturbances and to isolate those parts of the system
on which the disturbances occur [1]. These systems play a vital role
in maintaining the high degree of service reliability required in
present day power systems [2]. In reality, however, protection sys-
tems may be exposed to two main failure modes, since they can fail
either by not responding when they should or by operating when
they should not. The reliability of protection relay can be improved
by carrying out routine maintenance or by including built-in mon-
itoring and self-checking facilities during the design stages.
In recent years, considerable efforts have been devoted to eval-
uate the extent up which these failure modes can affect the power
system reliability [17]. In [2], a Markov model which is used to
examine the effect of routine tests and self-checking intervals on
system reliability is described. The proposed method has been
Corresponding author. Address: Department of Electrical Engineering,
Amirkabir University of Technology, Hafez Street, Tehran, Iran. Tel.: +98 21
64543300; fax: +98 21 66406469.
E-mail address: askarian@aut.ac.ir (H.A. Abyaneh).
further improved in [3] by dividing the Markov model into two
main parts which are devoted to express different situations of
power component and protective devices. In [4], the effect of relay
coordination methods on reliability indices of an interconnected
power system has been studied. The authors evaluated the effect
of protection failures on the reliability indices using two separate
Markov models, one of them was dedicated to power system com-
ponents and the other was considered for protective devices. In [1],
a Markov model has been proposed which is capable to consider
redundant protection systems.
Most of the aforementioned papers have been based of two
main assumptions. First, the power system has been assumed to
be interconnected. Furthermore, protective relays have been con-
sidered as the main protection device to protect such systems
[8,9]. However, the mentioned assumptions are of limited rele-
vance in case of distribution systems which have usually radial con-
guration with fuse cutouts as the main protective devices. This
device is more economical and, therefore, is favored on a distribu-
tion level. The fuse cutouts have some different features comparing
to the protection relays which made it special in reliability model-
ing. For example, the rate of hidden failures of the fuses is lower
than the rate of hidden failures of relays. The reason is the differ-
ence between the nature of relays and fuses. The relay protection

0142-0615/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2012.04.038
576 M. Gilvanejad et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 42 (2012) 575582
system contains several parts such as transducers (CT1, VT2), circuit
breaker, relay, etc. Each of them has its own failure rate and makes
the total failure rate noticeable [10]. However, the fuse only operates
as a single element which is in series with the other components of
the circuit. Therefore, only its own failure rate is taking into account
[11]. Therefore, there is a knowledge gap to nd an appropriate Mar-
kov model applicable for these devices.
This paper tries to focus on this topic by bringing two main con-
tributions into the existing literature. First, a Markov model is pro-
posed which is capable to consider the distinct reliability features
of fuse cutouts. Then, the proposed Markov model is used to allo-
cate fuse cutouts in MV overhead lines by using the well-known
reliability index of energy not supplied (ENS). Finally, an economic
analysis is presented to investigate cost-saving benets of the pro-
posed model in protection device allocation procedure.
2. Problem statement
The ultimate purpose of protection is to provide power system
reliability. It might seem that protection of equipments is the pur-
pose of protection systems, but this misses the global picture. It is
the integrity of the system which is being protected [5]. To design
protection scheme of a specic system, various devices become
available and may have signicant cost. Thus, the evaluation of
the impact of applying new device as well as its cost effectiveness,
is required.
Overcurrent relays (OCRs) and directional overcurrent relays
(DOCRs) are widely used for the protection of radial and ring
sub-transmission and distribution systems [12]. In some cases, dif-
ferential protection scheme is also used in distribution feeder pro-
tection system due to its fast operation [13]. In distribution
systems, these relays have relatively considerable cost comparing
to other devices and mainly are used in the beginning of the feed-
ers at the primary substations [14]. They have been studied in lit-
erature in several areas of research such as optimum coordination
and advanced coordination methods, optimum routine test and
self checking intervals, coordination of instantaneous trip func-
tions with other protective devices like current-limiting fuses,
etc. [2,1518].
Reclosers and sectionalizers, which are other distribution pro-
tective devices, also have relatively high expense and are usually
installed on the beginning of distribution branches which serve
sensitive loads. They are also used for improving the reliability of
the system especially in the DG-enhanced distribution networks
with preserving the protection system coordination [19]. But, there
is a protective device in distribution system which is inexpensive
and widely used along the distribution feeders and branches and
also for protecting the pole-mounted transformers. This device is
fuse cutout and as mentioned above, has two different usages;
one for protecting the pole-mounted transformers. Therefore, it is
located at the primary side of each aforementioned transformer.
The other is in feeder protection where the fuse cutout is placed
at the joint points and protects the main feeder from outages initi-
ated at the feeder taps. These two usages are shown in Fig. 1.
The location of fuse cutouts which are used for transformer pro-
tection is completely denite. They are installed at the primary
side of MV3/LV4 transformers. The rating of these fuses is chosen
based on the standard list according to its protected MV/LV trans-
former capacity [20]. Such fuses should be coordinated with the up-
stream fuses and overcurrent relay exists at the beginning of the MV
feeder. But, here questions raise as: Where is the proper and cost
1 ation period of the network. The reason is the need for load de-
Current transformer.
2
Voltage transformer.
3
Medium voltage.
4
Low voltage.
Fig. 1. Types of fuse cutout usages: (a) at joint point and (b) primary side of
transformer.
effective place for the joint point fuse cutouts?, Should they be in-
stalled at the beginning of every joint point along the distribution
feeders? For example, if a branch has a few meters length and only
one or two small transformers are being installed along this branch,
does it need an individual fuse cutout for protecting itself or an up-
stream protection device could provide the required protection?
In an increasingly competitive market environment where com-
panies emphasize cost control, correct modeling and allocation of
fuse cutouts which can lead to a cost-saving approach become
important. To answer the aforementioned questions, it is necessary
to evaluate the reduction of frequency and duration of outages
happening in a specic period of time and for a specic set of cus-
tomers. Placing the fuse cutout at the joint points leads to decrease
the faulty zone; therefore, the resultant benet should be com-
pared to the investments that need to be expended for the required
number of fuse cutouts. Achieving this aim, the reliability model-
ing of fuse cutouts should be studied and the performance of fuse
for providing an economical reliable distribution network should
be assessed. Markov model of a fuse is a suitable approach for
reliability modeling in Monte-Carlo simulations which will be
expressed in the following section.
3. Fuse Markov model
The rst step in determining the reliability model for any sys-
tem is to understand its function, the constraints under which it
operates, and the root cause of the failure [2]. Here, to better
understand the reliability modeling of the fuse cutout, the distinc-
tive features of the fuse in comparison with the protective relays
are discussed.
There have been a number of models established to facilitate
the reliability evaluation including protective relay failures. The
models of current-carrying component paired with its associated
relay protection system are proposed in literature [13,6]. Also, a
model that separates the component Markov model from the pro-
tection Markov model has been suggested in [4]. In that paper [4],
the model is capable of analyzing the different reactions of over-
current relays that have been installed on the both sides of a line,
when a fault occurs in an interconnected system.
If the fuse is placed as the protective device in an electrical sys-
tem, there is a reason that makes the Markov modeling of the fuse
differ. The important point is that the fuse has not an inspection
state when the current-carrying component is up. This is an intrin-
sic feature of the fuse which is placed in series with the line while
the network operator is not able to test this device during the oper-
energizing during the test process and detrimental effects of fuse
tests leading to fuse burning and fuse-link removal after the test
completion. Thus, the inspection state will never exist in the
 M. Gilvanejad et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 42 (2012) 575582
reliability model of the fuse. It leads to the fact that the probability
of true or false operating of the fuse cutout can only be considered
when the component fails. In other words, it is possible to con-
struct a Markov model of the fuse cutout only involved when the
current carrying component fails.
The Markov model of fuse cutout having ve states is shown in
Fig. 2. As mentioned above, all of these states, except state 1, are
probable to occur only when the current carrying component is
down. The states in Fig. 2 are as follows:
 State 1: the fuse cutout is carrying the current.
 State 2: the fuse link of fuse cutout starts to melt.
 State 3: the fuse cutout trips.
 State 4: the fuse cutout has experienced failure to operate.
 State 5: backup protection trips.
The notations in Fig. 2 are:
lI1 sum of repair rates relevant to component and fuse
cutout in normal (main) protection zone;
lI2 sum of repair rates relevant to component and fuse
cutout in backup protection zone;
wN normal tripping rate to isolate component;
wB backup tripping rate to isolate component;
k failure rate of component;
kp1 failure rate of fuse cutout to expose to undesired trip;
kp2 failure rate of fuse cutout to state of failure to operate.
kMC rate of mis-coordination of protection
The reason of selecting two different coefcients for main and
backup tripping and repair rates of protection system is the differ-
ences that exist between the operation speed and fault locating
time in these two protection zones in reality. The backup protec-
tion (relay/fuse) should act with delay when the main protection
(fuse) has no action. After tripping the backup protection, fault
locating process takes longer time because the zone of backup pro-
tection is more extensive than the main protection zone. The hid-
den failure is not considered for the backup protection because the
occurring of hidden failures in the set of main and backup protec-
tions is rare.
In the model depicted in Fig. 2, the mode of inuencing the mis-
coordination of protection system on the reliability model has been
shown. As shown in this gure, the mis-coordination makes the
backup protection operate before the main protection. The rate
of mis-coordination events greatly depends on the skill of protec-
tion staff. In this paper, we want to locate the proper place for
Fig. 2. Markov model of fuse cutout.
577
the fuse cutouts in a distribution system considering the econom-
ical and technical features. Human errors are not included in the
study hence, the mis-coordination factor is neglected. The mis-
coordination effect can be studied in each utility by applying the
related kMC in the model of g. 2. The remaining parts will be the
same as the approach presented in the following sections of the
paper.
In general, in normal operating condition, load currents are nor-
mally distributed in the network branches and fuse cutouts con-
duct the current in a normal manner. In this situation, fuse
cutout is in state 1 (Fig. 2) where constitutes most time of opera-
tion period. When a fault occurs in the distribution system, huge
amount of current passes through the fuses and makes it start
melting (state 2). If the fuse cutout trips correctly, the fault will
be isolated and fuse will be placed in state 3. Otherwise, if the fuse
fails to operate in a rational time (state 4) then backup protection
has to trip immediately (state 5). After isolating the fault, either in
normal zone or backup zone, the repair action starts and returns
the system to a good state (state 1). In some instances, the fuse
trips erroneous and makes the system to be de-energized unrea-
sonably. In such situations, system goes directly from state 1 to
state 3.
In this way, the proposed model in Fig. 2 could model the differ-
ent states which could happen in the fuse cutout protected distri-
bution network. This model will be used in reliability analysis for
the fuse allocating methodology.
4. Fuse cutout allocation
4.1. Fuse cutout allocation methodology
Regardless the overcurrent relays which exist in sub-transmis-
sion substations and being installed at the beginning of the med-
ium voltage feeders, the MV overhead lines are also protected by
fuse cutouts. These fuses are mainly placed at the joint points along
the feeders. As mentioned before, determining the number of fuses
that should be installed along a feeder is a problem. This problem is
solved through the cost and benet balancing. Costs contain capital
expenses to be invested for fuse cutouts and benets contain rev-
enues obtained from the outage and maintenance cost reduction.
In order to estimate the outage costs of a distribution system,
the reliability analysis is required. This estimation could be done
by Monte Carlo iterative approach. The Markov Model of a fuse cut-
out which is offered in Fig. 2 has been used in this Monte Carlo
simulation.
It is necessary to mention that the reliability analysis should be
done for each fuse cutout removal on candidate places of the re-
lated MV network. In this way, the analysis provides the amount
of energy not supplied that fuse could decrease. Then, the worth
of this additional sold energy is compared with the investments
that are required for the fuse cutout installation. If the fuse cutout
installation has the economical justication, the benet of outage
reduction during the life time of the network will compensate
the investments for fuse cutouts at installation time and will ob-
tain some nancial benets for utility owners. Otherwise, the re-
lated place is not proper for the fuse cutout placement.
Since in real networks, multiple faults may concurrently occur
in different parts of the network, the reliability analysis should en-
able to model this type of failures. However, the reliability calcula-
tions should only consider one failure whenever the multiple failed
components devote to a unique protective device.
Furthermore, the magnitude of the energy not supplied (ENS),
that occurs in a feeder because of the feeder failures, depends on
two main factors: (a) the feeder load, and (b) the feeder length.
The manner of affecting the load amplitude is that, whatever the
578 M. Gilvanejad et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 42 (2012) 575582
feeder load increases, the occurrence of any outage makes more
customers be de-energized and the amount of energy not supplied
increases. The other factor, the feeder length, causes that what-
ever the length increases, the probability of fault and outage occur-
rence increases which will lead to energy not supplied increment.
These two factors obviously show that making decision about plac-
ing or not placing a fuse cutout along a feeder strongly depends on
the feeder and load conguration.
Based on the above discussions, it is proposed a method for the
fuse cutout allocation as the following steps:
a. Fuse cutouts are placed at every beginning and middle
points of medium voltage overhead lines.
b. For each fuse removal, the reliability analysis is performed
and the rate of ENS changes is calculated.
c. If the cost of ENS increment due to fuse cutout removal was
less than the investment that is required for the fuse instal-
lation therefore, the fuse cutout should not be installed.
Otherwise, fuse cutout must be installed.
The middle point of the feeders is considered as a typical place
for sectionalizing type of fuse cutouts. This type of fuse can be in-
stalled anywhere between start and ending points of the feeder.
4.2. Formulation of fuse Markov model in Monte Carlo simulation
The probability of residing in each state of Markov model
shown in Fig. 2 in an analytical way can be obtained via the theory
of Continuous Markov Processes [1]. The steady state probabilities
of the proposed Markov model can be calculated by solving the fol-
lowing equation:
PaP
where a is the state transitional probability matrix:
2 3
0 k kp1 0 0
6 0 0 wN kp2 kMC 7
6 7
6 7
a6
6 lI1 0 0 0 0 77
6 7
4 0 0 0 0 wB 5
lI2 0 0 0 0 where P.W._of_CENS is the present worth of the whole energy not
And P is the row vector of state probabilities:
P Pstate1 Pstate2 Pstate3 Pstate4 Pstate5 
Using Eqs. (1)(3), it is possible to obtain the average values of
the probabilities devoted to reside in each state. In our approach,
however, for closing the results to reality (real values, not average
values), the non-sequential Monte Carlo simulation is used to
achieve the more accurate results. Since the failure rates of the net-
work devices and protection systems are supposed to be constant,
their failure probability corresponds to the exponential probability
density function. The failure probability of a network component
according to exponential density function is as follows:
pt kekt ; tP0
where t is the age of the network component in year. The probabil-
ity of multiple faults for a single component during a year is fullled
by the Poisson process as follows:
kk ek
pk ; k 0; 1; . . .
k!
where k is the number of component failures in a year.
In Monte Carlo method, a random number generator that pro-
duces random numbers between 0 and 1 is used for assigning a
random failure probability to each network component. Whenever
the random assigned number was smaller than the calculated
failure probability based on Eqs. (4) and (5), the related component
is considered as a failed component. This procedure is also accom-
plished in this paper for modeling the component repair process as
well as the protection system malfunctioning in Monte Carlo sim-
ulation; through replacing k in Eqs. (4) and (5) with related failure
or repair rates (e.g. lI1, lI2, kp1, etc.).
4.3. Formulation of allocation criteria
If annual failure rate of an overhead line is shown with k then,
the average cost of annual energy not supplied CENS-a can be calcu-
lated through the following equation:
C ENS-a kLP av e T outage C ENS 6
where L is the length of feeder, Pave is the average active power of
loads which have experienced the outages, Toutage is the average
outage time and CENS is the worth of energy not supplied unit (i.e.
$/KW h). As mentioned before, Eq. (6) is an average value and only
takes into account the failure rate of the feeder. In order to involve
the failure rates of protection system in each state of Markov model
shown in Fig. 2, a Monte Carlo simulation which utilizes random
number generators to model stochastic failure occurrences in com-
ponent and protection areas is employed and the related outage
time and energy not supplied are calculated simultaneously. There-
fore, the annual cost of ENS is calculated as follows:
C ENS-a-tot ENS  C ENS 7
where ENS is total energy not supplied which consists of energy not
supplied because of occurring faults in overhead lines and energy
not supplied because of failures in protection system and CENS-a-tot
is its related costs. Since CENS-a-tot is a cost that happens every year
1 during the network lifetime so, it should be converted to the pres-
ent value. With the aid of this conversion, it makes possible com-
pare ENS cost with the investment cost which is being spent at
the present time. To achieve this aim, the following equation is used
[21]:
2 1 RORn  1
P:W: of C ENS  C ENS-a-tot 8
ROR  1 RORn
supplied during the lifetime of the network, ROR is the rate of
investment return that the utility owner expects (rate of interest)
3 and n is the lifetime of the network in years. Proper installation of
fuse cutouts along the feeders could reduce CENS-a-tot and make
some benet for the utilities. In general, if the following equation
has a positive value, the fuse installation at the relevant point is
not required. Otherwise, if it has a negative value, the fuse cutout
is required.
NB C cap  P:W: of C ENS 2  P:W: of C ENS 1 9
where NB is the net benet of fuse removal and Ccap is the capital
costs required for fuse cutout placement. Also (1) and (2) indices
represent the total worth of feeder ENS before and after fuse re-
4 moval, respectively.
In the next section, the proposed methodology is implemented
in sample networks and the results are discussed in detail.
5. Study results
5
5.1. Simple test case
The allocation methodology is demonstrated in a constituted
system of seven branches and seven transformers which is also
used in [22]. In this system, each transformer is dened with the
load power of 150 KW, 1-km branch length, 13.8 kV of operation
 M. Gilvanejad et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 42 (2012) 575582 579

Table 3
Network ENS results.

Branch no. of No fuse 12 34 35 16 67

removed fuse removal
ENS (kW h) (Monte 2815 3630 3230 3230 3490 2960
Carlo)
Priority of removal 4 2 2 3 1

Fig. 3. System example.

and a failure rate equal to one fault a year (k = 1). The re-establish-
ment time (Toutage) is 55 min. Fig. 3 shows the described system. In
Fig. 3, triangles contain electrical loads and circles are fuse cutouts.
The failure and repair probability distribution functions of the
network devices are formed according to their related failure and
repair rates and then are used in Monte Carlo simulation. For
example, the probability distribution functions related to each
branch failure will be equal to:
pt et ; tP0
And,
e1
pk ; k 0; 1; . . .
k!
In [22], the aforementioned distribution system is used for
implementing the protection coordination algorithm and the aver-
age energy not supplied of the system is calculated as a criterion
for priority of fuse removal. The calculated ENS has not considered
the hidden failures of the fuses. In that paper, since the goal is the
coordination of protection devices, an estimate of average values of
ENS is useful for prioritizing of fuse removal; and fuse allocation is
not the subject of the study. In our study, however, in order to eco-
nomically evaluate the fuse cutout allocation, the real values of
ENS are needed to be taken into account. Thus, it is required that
more real parameters affecting the operation of real network be
considered in reliability studies such as undesired trip and failure
to operate of protection systems, re-establishment time of main
and backup protection, etc. In this study, the re-establishment time
of the network in backup zone of the protection system is consid-
ered as twice (110 min) of outage time in the main protection sys-
tem (55 min). The value of other parameters for the cutout fuse
Markov model which is used in simulations is presented in Table 1.
In Table 2, to compare the results of analytical (Ref. [22]) and
iterative Monte Carlo approaches, the quantities of ENS for differ-
ent fuse removals of sample network are presented.
Table 1
Fuse cutout reliability data [9].
kp1 (failure/year) kp2 (failure/year) WN (operation/h)
0.00374 0.00876 36,000
Table 2
Comparison of ENS results.
Fig. 4. First candidate of fuse cutout removal.
10
In Table 2, in order to keep similarity with assumptions in [22],
the protection failure rates are not considered for the Monte Carlo
simulations; therefore, no backup protection exists. As can be seen,
11
the results are close to each other. But there are some differences
between the quantities which despite low magnitude, is important
when the size of the network extends and the number of cutout
fuses increases. Monte Carlo estimates the reliability indices based
on the stochastic approach which corresponds to the network
behavior essence. Therefore, its results are more useful for techni-
caleconomical evaluations.
The ENS values resulting from the proposed Markov model
(Fig. 2) in Monte Carlo simulations which include all of the param-
eters shown in Fig. 2, are presented in Table 3. According to the ta-
ble, the rst priority of fuse cutout removal is fuse No. 6 (Fig. 4).
The quantities that have been inserted in Table 3 are annual val-
ues and to implement the proposed methodology for the fuse allo-
cation, the present worth of ENS cost during the life time of the
system should be calculated before and after fuse cutout removal.
So
1:120  1
PW of C ENS 1  2815  0:1
0:1  1:120
PW of C ENS 1 2396:6$
12
1:120  1
PW of C ENS 2  2960  0:1
0:1  1:120
PW of C ENS 2 2520:0$
Eq. (12) is computed according to (8), where ROR and n are assumed
WB (operation/h) 0.1 and 20. CENS is also assumed 0.1 $/kW h.
The capital cost of the installation a series of three phase fuse
18,000
cutouts is supposed 170 $. Now, it is possible to calculate the intro-
duced criteria (Eq. (9)) to judge about preserving or removing the
fuse cutout which can be placed on branch (67):
NB 170  2520:0  2396:6 46:6$ 13

Branch no. of No fuse 12 34 35 16 67

Therefore, Eq. (13) declares that the fuse cutout is not required
removed fuse removal in branch (67) and should be removed. After removing this fuse
ENSa (kW h/year) 2755.5 3580.2 3169.6 3169.6 3444.2 2893.1
cutout, the process should be repeated and the removal priorities
(analytical) should be determined again. Results of this stage are presented
ENS (kW h/year) 2730 3555 3160 3160 3400 2880 in Table 4.
(Monte Carlo) Two points can be achieved from Table 4. The rst one is that
Priority of 4 2 2 3 1
the next candidate for fuse removal is fuse No. (34) or (35).
removal
The second one which is more important is that the sequence
a
The values of this row is obtained from [18]. of fuse removal priorities has changed comparing to Table 3.
580 M. Gilvanejad et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 42 (2012) 575582

Table 4 Now, in order to make decision about the second fuse removal,
Network ENS results after the rst fuse removal. the worth of ENS increment duo to the eliminating of the fuse of
Branch no. of removed fuse No fuse 12 34 35 16 the highest removal priority (fuse No. (34)) is again calculated:
removal
ENS (kW h/year) (Monte 2960 3770 3370 3370 4280 1:120  1
PW of C ENS 2  3370  0:1
Carlo) 0:1  1:120 14
Priority of removal 2 1 1 3
PW of C ENS 2 2869:1$
Therefore, NB equals to:

Table 5 NB 170  2869:1  2520:0 179:1$ 15

Network ENS results after taking new rates for fuse cutout undesired trip (kp1).
The fuse removal has not any justication this time and fuse
kp1 = 0.095 kp1 = 0.95 cutout No. (34) (or (35)) should be preserved. Since this fuse
(failure/year) (failure/year)
was the rst priority for fuse removal in the network, the other
ENS (kW h/ Fuse cutout No. (34) 3030 3980 candidates certainly will not have justication for the removal.
year) preserved
In order to more clarifying the inuence of a factor which affects
Fuse cutout No. (34) 3410 4160
removed the removal or preserving the fuse cutouts during the allocation
NB ($) 153.4 16.8 procedure, some complementary studies are performed here. This
important factor is the magnitude of hidden failure rates. The
undesired trip or failure to operate of fuse cutouts will result in
ENS augmentation in distribution systems. Bigger values of hidden
Table 6 failure rates will result in bigger values of total network ENS.
Network ENS results after taking new rates for fuse cutout failure to operate (kp2). Therefore, the hidden failure rate increment in fuse cutouts may
result in more fuse cutout removal action to achieve less ENS value
kp2 = 0.015 kp2 = 0.15
(failure/ (failure/ of the network in optimum placement procedure. For example, the
year) year) second fuse cutout removal action for the test system has not eco-
ENS (kW h/ Fuse cutout No. (34) 2950 3590 nomic justication (Eq. (15)) when its hidden failure rate was
year) preserved according to Table 1. However, its removal will have economic jus-
Fuse cutout No. (34) 3320 3780 tication if the fuse cutout hidden failure rate has large enough va-
removed
lue to make the answer of Eq. (15) positive.
NB ($) 144.9 8.3
In order of evaluation the effect of hidden failure rate magni-
tude on the economic justication which is investigated in fuse
cutout allocation process, some complementary simulations were
In Table 3, fuse No. (16) has higher priority than fuse No. (12). In performed to assess this issue and their results have been reported
Table 4 fuse No. (12) has higher priority for removal. Therefore, it in Tables 5 and 6.
can be concluded that the sequence of fuse removal should be Tables 5 consists the ENS results for changing the undesired trip
re-evaluated after any fuse cutout elimination. value of fuse cutouts in the system of Fig. 3 and Table 6 consists the

Fig. 5. Distribution system for RBTS bus 5.

 M. Gilvanejad et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 42 (2012) 575582 581

Fig. 6 illustrates the conguration of the fuse cutout and the dis-
connector at the joint points [24].
In [23,24], the fuses and disconnectors are assumed to be 100%
reliable. But, here in our study, the fuses are not 100% reliable and
have failure rates corresponding to the mentioned quantities in Ta-
ble 1. The reliability data for the 11 kV lines are shown in Table 7
[23,24].
The failure and repair probability distribution function for the
network components and protection systems are formed and they
are used in Monte Carlo simulation. The failure probability func-
tion of the network overhead lines will be equal to as follows:

pt 0:065  l  e0:065lt ; tP0 16

And,

0:065  lk e0:065l
pk ; k 0; 1; . . . 17
k!
where l is the length of overhead line in both aforementioned rela-
tionships. Now, the fuse cutout allocation methodology is imple-
Fig. 6. Joint point conguration. mented on the feeder F1 of the system shown in Fig. 5.
Comparing to the previous sample test, in this case, the disconnec-
tors have been added to distribution system and are included in the
Table 7 reliability simulations. The feeder lengths and loading data are
Overhead lines reliability data. according to [23].
Failure rate (failure/year km) Repair time (h) Switching time (h)
Similarly, the rst step is the determination of the removal pri-
orities. This data has been collected in Table 8.
0.065 5 1.0
The present worth of ENS before and after removing the rst
candidate cutout fuse (i.e. cutout fuse No. 11) equals to:

ENS results for changing the failure to operate value of fuse cutouts
in the system of Fig. 3. The rst row of ENS results in Tables 5 and 6
devotes to the energy not supplied values of the network which are
calculated with new values of kp1 and kp2 before removing the fuse
cutout No. (34). As can be seen in these two tables, removal of
fuse cutout No. (34) will have economical justication whenever
kp1 and kp2 take large enough values and causes the NB takes a po-
sitive value. Furthermore, it is seen that the inuence of kp2 (failure
to operate) variation on the energy not supplied value of the sys-
tem is much more than kp1 (undesired trip). In other words, the
fuse cutout allocation procedure is more sensitive to kp2 rather
than kp1.
The ENS is also inuenced by two other factors such as load
magnitude and feeder length. Changing each of them could change
the nal decision about the fuse. Hence, in order to show the gen-
erality of the proposed methodology, IEEE distribution reliability
test system will be studied in the next section.
5.2. IEEE 6-bus test system (RBTS)
The IEEE test system for reliability assessment is a 6 bus test
system with ve load buses (bus 2bus 6). The distribution net-
work at bus 5 represents a typical urban type network consisting
of residential, government and institutional, ofce and buildings,
and commercial customers. The peak load of the distribution sys-
tem at bus 5 is 20 MW. The distribution network at bus 5 is labeled
in detail in Fig. 5 [23].
In this network, a fuse cutout is placed at any join point. Fur-
thermore, a disconnector has been installed after each join point.
1:120  1
PW of C ENS 1  2750  0:1
0:1  1:120
PW of C ENS 1 2341:3$
18
1:120  1
PW of C ENS 2  2920  0:1
0:1  1:120
PW of C ENS 2 2486:0$
For this state, the NB factor for cutout fuse removal is calculated
as:
NB 170  2486:0  2341:3 25:3$ 19
Therefore, cutout fuse 11 should be removed. Prioritizing the
fuse cutouts at the next stage after removing the cutout fuse 11
is demonstrated in Table 9.
In the case of evaluating the elimination of cutout fuse No. 9,
the NB will be equal to 17.3$ therefore, it should be preserved.
As the results show, in every distribution system, the problem
of placing or removing the fuse cutout on the beginning of the
branches should be evaluated case by case. In the two samples
which are studied in this paper, one fuse cutouts was been in-
stalled improperly.
In this way, all of MV overhead lines can be evaluated for the
fuse cutout allocation and only the fuse cutouts with technical
and economical justications are installed. The procedure which
is described in this paper can help to better modeling of the fuse
cutout operation in distribution systems and the network opera-
tors can better manage the network investments through optimal
placement of fused cutouts in distribution systems where, large
numbers of fused cutouts are usually installed.

Table 8
Network ENS results and removal priorities.

Branch No. of removed fuse No fuse removal 2 3 5 6 8 9 11

ENS (kW h/year) 2750 3680 3680 3410 3140 3010 2960 2920
Priority of removal 6 6 5 4 3 2 1
582 M. Gilvanejad et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 42 (2012) 575582

Table 9
Network ENS results and removal priorities.

Branch No. of removed fuse No fuse removal 2 3 5 6 8 9

ENS (kW h/year) 2920 3790 3790 3540 3320 3220 3140
Priority of removal 5 5 4 3 2 1

6. Conclusion [8] Tuitemwong K, Premrudeepreechacharn S. Expert system for protection

In this paper, a new Markov model for the reliability analysis of
the fuse cutouts has been proposed which considers the hidden
failures of the fuses. Also, a methodology has been suggested for
the fuse cutout allocation along the medium voltage overhead dis-
tribution lines. This methodology gives a simple and useful crite-
rion for decision making about fuse cutout placement. The
approach has been tested on two different networks. One of these
was a simple constituted network which the methodology is
implemented and its concepts were explained. Another one was
the IEEE reliability test system and the methodology was discussed
for one of its feeders. This network had also disconnectors whose
effects are included in the reliability simulations. Fuse cutout allo-
cation results showed that in both sample networks, there was a
fuse cutout which was been installed improperly.
Therefore, using the proposed methodology in this paper, the
reliability of MV overhead lines is maintained at a reasonable level
while preserving the protection system adequacy. The results of
the implementing the proposed methodology in two sample net-
works show its capability and simplicity to be applied in real MV
overhead distribution lines.
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