Outage data analysis and RAMS evaluation of the Italian overhead transmission lines

A serious failure of a power transmission line can generate substantial financial losses due to the power outage. Consequently, utilities have a clear incentive to assess the actual condition of strategically important transmission lines, with the aim to minimize the risk of failures, enhance the maintenance practices and plan the development of the transmission network. This work focuses on the analysis of forced outages data for high-voltage overhead transmission lines (OHTL) in the Italian network during the period from 2008 to 2014. After a brief survey of the Italian network, the analysis has been carried out as follows: after a preliminary identification of the outage causes for OHTL, a new factor, namely the Severity Factor, has been introduced with the aim to drive the prioritization of the failure causes and the enhancement of the maintenance activities. Finally, an evaluation of the reliability, availability, safety and maintainability (RAMS) of the Italian OHTL network has been performed