A spare strategy of circuit breakers considering aging failures

Abstract

This paper presents a spare strategy of circuit breakers (CBs) considering aging failures based on condition monitoring data. The monitoring data are used to estimate the functional ages of CBs and the aging failure rates of CBs are calculated using the functional ages. The loss-of-load damage costs caused by both repairable and aging failures of CBs are evaluated together with the investment of spares. The number and timing of spare CBs can be determined by comparing the damage cost reductions due to spares with the additional investment costs. The proposed strategy is applied to a substation located in the south China to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.