Determining Optimal Inspection Rates of Power Equipment Considering Opportunistic Maintenance Strategy

To obtain optimal inspection rates of power equipment, this paper presents an inspection rates optimization model for power equipment asset management which explicitly considers equipment aging using Markov process. The model combines random and deterioration failure modes with maintenance activities. Opportunistic maintenance strategy in long-run time span with non-periodic inspections is proposed to fully benefit from the economic dependence between different failure modes while the existing Markov maintenance models can't incorporate opportunistic maintenance strategy. In the model, when random failure occurs, the opportunity to maintain deterioration failure is considered. The model can optimize the non-periodic inspection rates for power equipment by minimizing the total cost consisting of maintenance cost, repair cost and expected energy not supplied (EENS) cost. Typical substation configuration is used to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed model. The analysis results in the case study show that opportunistic maintenance strategy has significant impacts on equipment reliability and optimal inspection rates.