Predicting Future Asset Condition Based on Current Health Index and Maintenance Level

With restructuring of the electricity sector into profit oriented business models, an increasing number of electric utilities are adopting health indices to measure and monitor the condition of their assets. The health indices represent a novel way for capturing and quantifying the results of operating observations, field inspections and in-situ and laboratory testing into an objective and quantitative picture, providing the overall health of the assets. Asset health indices become a powerful tool in managing assets and identifying investment needs and prioritizing investments into capital and maintenance programs. When appropriately developed, health indices provide an accurate indication of the probability of asset failures and associated risks. Having established the asset health index under current conditions, health index values in future can be predicted by taking into account the impact of environmental and operating conditions along with the preventative maintenance practices. This paper describes the techniques to account for impact of preventative maintenance on health indices and for predicting future asset condition based on the current health index and maintenance practices. The techniques can be used for evaluating future risks associated with an asset or in selecting optimal maintenance levels that would provide the right balance between risk and investment costs.