CAGRE 2015

Algiers, Mars 24 -26, 2015

21 rue d’Artois, F-75008 PARIS Algeria
http : //www.cigre.org

Best Practices for Managing the Aged Power Assets

Benlahneche Saâd-eddine
Transmission chief engineer – DTE / ST
GRTE - SONELGAZ - ALGERIA
E-Mail: benlahneche.saadeddine@grte.dz

SUMMARY

By the end of the last two decades, especially in the countries where liberalization of the
energy market has been introduced; the deregulation has increased the consciousness of
economical factors in electricity network utilities. In order to get maximum return on
investments, shareholders are demanding satisfactory operating profits and high reliability.
That is why the major concerns of the contemporary network actors are concentrated on asset
management: reducing costs, postponing investments, exceeding common limitations in
exploiting the network assets, maximizing the lifetimes of electricity network components,
while still keeping up a high level of reliability and availability. Today, several assets have
already reached or are approaching their financial end of life. Considerable efforts are being
spent in means and techniques to manage these critical assets in order to maintain reliable
operation at a reasonable level of risk and expense.
This communication outlines all the concepts, tools, methods that asset managers are
applying to react at the critical challenges posed by an aged power system and feasible
decision-making process options to mitigate them.

KEYWORDS

Assets aging – deregulation and changes – aging effect on assets - asset management
techniques and strategies – individual condition indices – composite condition indices – risk
assessment and decision making – asset life cycle management.

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 2- INTRODUCTION

The challenge facing the industry today is in leveraging the most out of existing assets
without reducing customer service, while increasing the value of shareholder investment. This
requires operation and maintenance managers to fully understand the probable condition of
old and often highly loaded assets because first, the inevitable aging is one of many factors
that will drive future changes to the power systems and second, capital for reinvestment, even
for highly loaded equipments in poor health, is typically not available in the quantities
required.
These difficulties in adapting the economic approach to aging assets and the
projections of future capital needed to maintain reliable service across the system lead
generally to the erroneous financial capacity for many utilities in achieving their operation
and development capital spending. So, methods for evaluating the change in life and risk
probability along with the financial impact over time are vital tools to be developed. Such
assessment would include strict analysis to pinpoint the forecast peaks of needed capital based
on asset conditions and functional diagnostics associated to the risk calculation.
Generally, the risk analysis leads to the definition of several maintenance strategies
which are the most effective solution to the issue of aged power systems through improved
methods and techniques. The ultimate management challenge that affects customer
satisfaction and bottom-lines performance in today’s electric utility environment is directly
related to the risk optimization based on these limited capital, operation and maintenance
spending and increased aged stresses limits. So, components and asset management must
hence be handled from a system performance point of view and investment decisions should
be coordinated with operation and maintenance decisions to a large degree than in the past.

3 - FORCES OF CHANGE
The drivers for change that effectively convince all the actors including shareholders
and regulators to inject the necessary funds required to mitigate the risk level are needed to
improve understanding of :
 The effect of equipment failures on business objectives.
 The behaviour from the performance point of view of the system when
equipments are rated in the aged phase and their relationship.
 The changes of performance - based rates parameters such duration of forced
and planned outages when equipments are approaching their end of life.
 The costs related to the several life-cycle decision options as: repair- refurbish
– replace – relocate (RRRR options) and reliability and expectancy life
improvement gained on equipments.
 The physical parameters that must be monitored for any equipment to assess its
real condition and tools used for risk failure prediction.
 The keys performance indicators that must be settled as a benchmarking
process to develop continuously the required quality of service levels.
These forces help generally to structure the analysis at several levels by giving a real
picture about the different approaches that must be implanted in the planning of the network
for the eventual reinforcement strategies to be applied.

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 4 - ASSET MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES AND ACTIONS
The asset management is an integral approach of all aspects of the capital equipment
and network activities used to manage the network with minimal costs and maximal revenues,
while meeting the quality of service requirements of the customers and regulators over the
near or long term.
Asset management has become then the new corporate buzzword in the power
industry. What does it mean, how assets are managed today, what are the observed
characteristics of current assets especially the aged ones in an industry undergoing structural
and regulatory changes.
These are the main questions that need right replies and actions during the operating
and the maintenance of assets. Compounding these issues are the facts that most power
system equipments are old and continuing to age and that newly designed equipment has not
reliability history.
So, what is essential in the asset management is the following:

 Knowing how the major equipment will fail and what the current failure
drivers for your equipment are, based on past experience and the performance
degradation due to system aging and its wear out.
 Knowing what the expected lives for your major equipment are and developing
alternatives which span the full range of options as: repair, refurbish, replace and
relocate (RRRR).
 Knowing how technical and economic analysis is necessary to effectively
assess the benefits of the various solution options.
 Knowing when there is a change in health and condition of your major
equipment and its impact into the decision making process.
 Knowing how are your personnel competencies to conduct the necessary
analysis.
These remarks and their associated decisions must be based on using systematic,
consistent and repeatable approaches. For the most aged elements in the network, the asset
manager must concentrate his effort on the following three points:

 Assessment of the urgent actions

 Establishing the most optimised plan in terms of cost
 Developing a correct business plan and lifetime extension strategies

An initial requirement for effectively determining the risk associated with an aging
system is to know the overall condition of the asset in order to take specific actions. It’s given
through ongoing assessments of asset health indices and condition rating. Some models for
the assessment are used to determine the failure risk of the network components such
Arrhenius law and inverse power system, the probabilistic failure model based on Weibull
Function, Enlargement law, Markov model, Bayesian techniques, fuzzy logic
calculations,…[1],[2]. (Figure 1)

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 Figure 1: Failure models of electrical components.

The quantification of risk to the business values requires an understanding of the asset
failure modes related to the relative reliability of the equipment in the network and how its
change affects the system.

A- Assessment of the Urgent Actions:

Generally, the development of equipment asset health indices is based on score system
that enables asset managers to rank their asset fleets by condition and criticality of the
equipment on the electrical network.
Several methods are developed all over the world and in Algeria, at GRTE; a specific
method was suggested for application to power transformers fleet, and according to their
condition indices values the life cycle phases will be easily assessed and the several
decisions will be then correctly carried out [3] (table1; figure: 2).

Figure 2: Condition and life cycle phases of power transformers

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 Condition index value ( 10) Condition rating
100 to 70 Reliable
70 to 40 Degenerated
40 to 01 Unpredictable

Table 1: Condition rating related to score ranking

The most other important asset groups requiring the same attention in the assessment of
health indices are circuit breakers [4], protection relays, overhead lines and underground
cables. The development of these asset health indices will be important for establishing the
risk of asset failure and the need for specific RRRR decisions.
In recent years, the introduction of composite health index concept as a useful tool for
representing the overall health of complex assets is promising many things especially about a
good definition and separation of priorities in maintenance and operation actions within the
several parts of assets [5]. It is very important then to understand the functionality of the asset
and the manner in which the various subsystems work together to perform the key asset
functions. Through this, the deduced composite health index captures deterioration of asset
subsystems as well as the critical deterioration of a dominant subsystem.
The health index in case of power transformers is based on established diagnostic
techniques and operation and maintenance history [6]. We use generally in the assessment the
dissolved gas analysis (DGA), furan analysis, frequency response analysis (FRA), failure
events frequency and severity and maintenance reports. Such techniques and data constitute
the selective condition criteria’s. Because aging of power transformers is a complex process
involving chemical, thermal, mechanical and electrical stresses; so, their capability to
withstand these stresses gradually decreases and the rate of degradation can increase through
stresses resultant combination. For this reason remaining life is typically provided in terms of
a probabilistic estimate and the aging of the active part depends on the magnitude of gas
generation and the cellulose insulation consumption.

Tables (2 and 3) demonstrate the different conditions assessed via the DGA which is
related to the state of all the fleet of power transformers of SETIF location in ALGERIA and
the technical life time of certain pieces taken from the network (71 elements)[7] .

GAS Condition 1 (%) Condition 2 (%) Condition 3 (%) Condition 4 (%)

H2 84.05 8.6 7.24 0
CH4 79.71 10.14 5.79 4.34
C2H6 69.6 5.79 5.79 18.84
C2H4 72.46 18.69 3.34 5.79
C2H2 79.71 4.34 4.79 11.59
CO2 36.23 36.23 23.18 3.44

Table 2: Active parts condition repartition of power transformers fleet of Sétif location
according to IEEE C54.104

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 Age Profile DP
U (kV) (years) 950 - 500 500 - 350 350 – 250 250 - 200
10 - 20 07 01 - 01
220 20 - 30 07 03 01 -
 30 05 04 - -
10 - 20 13 - 01 -
 220 20 - 30 09 05 - 01
 30 05 04 04 -

Table 3: Aging behaviour of cellulose insulation of power transformers

The technical condition assessment system allows for the capturing of equipment
condition information, followed by systematic evaluation and prioritization of refurbishment
projects and actions. The system is dynamic in nature in that it allows for projects to be set-up
individually without the reconfiguration of database structures to specific needs.

B - Cost Plan Optimization for Specific Asset Groups:

Generally, utility experts identify through the several assessments done at different
levels the need for expenditures and financial allocations related to the risk and business
objectives. However, when assets are rated in the normal degradation region, the least cost
method is often applied to mitigate the associated risk which is frequently moderate, but in the
wear out region, utilities should employ alternative methods to forecast the long term
financial spending of an aging/wear out system. The historical data such failure rates,
repair/refurbish/replace/relocate costs and the demographics of the various asset populations
are important ingredients to feed the financial investments at the different levels of
implications. Many advantages are associated to these forecasts; among them, they provide a
long term view of the problem which can be used in the behaviour determination of cost
spending and technical system performance status.
These approaches allow in predicting how the number of asset failures is expected to
change in the future, the new population going through the same failure and their associated
repair/refurbish costs. For every one involved in operation and maintenance management, the
hard question that needs a correct reply is without doubt when to spend capital dollars in
existing equipment? So, in the perfect situation, the goal would be not to spend dollars in the
existing plant. Ideally capital dollars would only be spent on new revenue sources (company
expansion and growth). Spending capital dollars on existing stations or lines equipment does
not increase revenue but only sustains current revenue. In the optimal situation, especially
when the asset is rated near or in the wear out region, maintenance programs would be so
effective if that equipment would never be too expensive to operate (Opex), would always
provide the operating level the customer requires and would never fail. But this is the real
situation where nothing is ideal.

The effective forecast then for expected changes in operation and maintenance due to
system aging/wear out is based on some steps like:

 Investigation of the failure types historically on selected assets

 Identification of their age profile when failures are expected to occur
 Costs scanning that had covered historically the necessary repairs
 Changes in failures number against a demographic information (figure 4)

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 Wear out
Region

Figure 3 Demographics and failure rate of asset populations

The approach in failure prediction is generally based on utilising probabilistic

representations of asset life of major categories of delivery assets which are obtained from the
industry sources and experience of utilities. The use of demographic information for both a
specific asset group and either a combination of asset groups is always assessed through the
hazard functions and the hazard rate (figure 4).

0
19 73 19 78 19 8 3 19 8 8 19 9 3 19 9 8 2003 2008 2 0 13

Figure 4 Hazard failure rate of transformers populations [8]

The result of expected number of failures would be a real decision support to forecast
the capital expenditures (Capex) and their impacts on the performance delivery of the system
during the future years.
The well known strategies in maintenance actions are to place the solutions into four
large families derived especially from an ageing state:

 The removal: asset extraction and demolition operations (retire).

 Routine maintenance: regular or repetitive maintenance actions
 Refurbishment: actions to increase the useful life (life extension) of assets
degraded by wear or time.
 Replacement: the construction of new asset that ensures the same function.

Generally, capitals should be spent on replacing equipment for the following reasons:
 The equipment has a high continued operation economic cost, this means that
continued operating and/or repairing the equipment is more costly than replacing
with new.
Many types of life cycle cost analysis can be done to establish this economic
point for specific equipment.

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  The equipment is the safety issue and needs to be replaced for the safe work
environment.
 The business conditions and operational performance levels (reliability) have
changed for the equipment such in the case where the equipment by design can
not operate to the levels required of it, the perception of the risk is too great and
the equipment is critical to the systems operations.
With equipment of lesser impact, refurbishment seems to be the ideal and the more
interested solution taken from an economic standpoint. It preserves in a good health some
parts of assets degraded by wear or time with inexpensive manner. It is therefore easy to make
a benchmark of the cost coming from the refurbishment operation to the delay of a
replacement investment and thus with the lifetime extension it allows.
A good definition of equipment asset strategy fellows generally the use of risk based
maintenance philosophy and process like reliability centered maintenance (RCM). Risk based
maintenance allows for methodically documenting, analyzing, and categorizing the many
needed elements to provide acceptable overall operating standards of the equipment while
allowing for acceptable operational risk. This is an essential analysis criterion to quantify
diagnostics of asset management strategies perfectly suited for assessing the impact of these
maintenance policies to the strategic goals and business expectations.

C - Life Extension Strategies and Business Plan:

Life time extension procedures without any condition assessment can not technically
be justified. However, there are several techniques used in electrical industry to extend the life
of the different asset groups. We find for example the following applied options as:
 Risk based maintenance application focused on critical components on
equipment
 De – rating of equipment
 Installing fault limiting equipment such as grounding resistors/reactors to
decrease damaging stresses on the equipment.
 Installing on line monitoring devices
 Oil treatment or exchange, replacement of bushings, exchange of tap changer
contacts and drying out of active parts of power transformers.
The key success to the life extension plan lies in the integration of equipment
refurbishment and repair with the development of the composite or individual health indices
due to the fact that they directly influence network performance and components reliability.
In the business plan, the optimisation process of the model should be set with a deep
regard to the aging/wear-out of the system within certain specific considerations as exploiting
all the synergies between replacement options and the need to upgrade network components
for other reason. Finally, all the technical solutions must be incorporated in the economic
doctrine of the network development and compared further by using the appropriate economic
performance indicators (KPI).

4 - DATA CAPTURE AND INFORMATION USE

For the effective management of power system assets it is necessary to capture and
manipulate a large amount of data concerning the considerable variety and number of assets
that are embedded in the network. As well as collecting basic data that defines and describes
the asset, there is also a need to record evolving information that is critical for managing
especially an aging system such asset demographics, hazard rate functions, historical
repair/refurbish/replacement costs, performance statistics and faults and defects history.

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 The conversion of this plethora of data into useful information is a significant
challenge. A first example of using accumulated data from various sources is the application
of health or condition indices. Condition indices are means of ranking assets based on their
proximity to end of life. They combine complex condition information to give a single
numerical value as a comparative indication of overall condition. The input data is a mixture
of the available historical information about the asset and diagnostic information. A second
example is about the use of hazard rate function in order to quantify the risk of the population
of assets being involved in the wear out region of the curve. Generally the expected number
of failures for a population is obtained by multiplying the demographic distribution column
by column with the value of hazard rate function for each specific service year.
There are several methods that such functions can be obtained, including from
industry data and specific utility data. Certain surveys are employed as a benchmarking
support to situate the asset state against the common practices applied over the world. Among
them CIGRE ones like for circuit breakers (technical report 83 – 1994), instrument
transformers (technical report 57-1990), and power transformers (work group 05-1983). The
increase in expected component failure as a function of age for the several assets of an
electrical network is given by the following table [4].

Component λnew λreal λold

Substation transformer 0.003 0.02 0.15
Distribution transformer 0.0007 0.005 0.037
Overhead line 0.042 0.2 0.96
Underground cable 0.005 0.02 0.082
Circuit breaker 0.0009 0.0066 0.049
switch 0.007 0.05 0.37

Table 4: Component failure rate as a function of age [9]

This requires that equipment failures be documented in terms of specific equipment

type, operating environment and loadings, cause of failure, service age at failure and so on.
The combination of asset data, condition data, fault performance data and failure statistics
together is being more and more used in the development of condition based risk management
strategies.

5 - CONCLUSION
One of the risks to be addressed is the deterioration of network assets over a time. As
assets age, they require eventually refurbishment and replacement. It has long been
recognised that age alone is not an accurate indicator of replacement needs. Diagnostic of
assets and maintenance data can be used to assess an asset health or condition index. This
allows the consistent assessment of the condition of large populations of assets. This process
allows also a clearer approach to managing the risk of asset deterioration through appropriate
asset replacement or refurbishment investment. Planned investment in this manner avoids
inefficiencies, reactive spending and poor network performance.
In the development of longer-term asset investment strategies, asset managers must
consider the whole portfolio of assets including the demographics, historical failure rates,
transmission system performance and the associated RRRR costs witch are the fundamental
basic support for the network planning decisions especially in the financial shrinking case.
However, the population entering the wear out region over the few next years will increase
and additional investment and risk based maintenance methods should be then deeply applied

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and regarded with a serious attention. The use of such tools will improve certainly the
accuracy and credibility of business cases for strategic asset spending of all types.

6 - REFERENCES
[1] – X. Zhang and al: Life asset management of the electrical components in medium
voltage networks. Proceedings of the XIVth international symposium on high voltage
engineering, Beijing, China, August 25-29, 2005
[2] - G.C. Montanari: Ageing phenomenology and Modelling. IEEE Trans. On Electrical
Insulation, 1993, Vol 28 N° 5, pp 755 – 773.
[3] - S. Benlahneche : Méthodologie d’évaluation des indices d’état des transformateurs de
puissance ; Rapport interne- GRTE- Sonelgaz – février 2006.
[4] - G. Balser and al: Selection of an optimal maintenance and replacement strategy of
H.V equipment by a risk assessment process. Cigré 2006, B3-103.
[5] - I. Khan and al: Health indices for substation asset condition assessment. EDIST
Conference, Markham, Ontario, Canada, January 2004.
[6] - S. Benlahneche: Power transformers management through their condition assessment
ranking. Arabic conference on transmission network and generation power plants
maintenance, July 25-26, Tripoli, Libya, 2006.
[7] - S. Benlahneche: Power transformers diagnostic and life management. Arabic
conference on transmission network and generation power plants maintenance, July
25-26, Tripoli, Libya, 2006.
[8] - W. H. Bartley: life cycle management of utility transformer assets. Conference on
breakthrough asset management for restructured power industry; Utah, October 10 –
11, 2002, USA.
[9] - H. L. Willis and al: Failure rate modeling using inspection data. IEEE Transactions on
power systems, Vol. 19 N°. 2, May 2004.

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