Davies Consulting Inc. has launched a Transmission Asset Life Cycle Analysis Study with an international consortium of electric utilities. The project will address a critical industry need to evaluate aging transmission facilities. Working with a steering group of transmission owners, DCI will conduct a comprehensive life cycle study for a select number of transmission assets and develop a series of failure frequency curves for each those assets. The end result of this project, which is scheduled for completion in mid-2008, will enable study participants to use a Web-based decision support model to evaluate the financial and reliability impacts of different transmission asset management strategies and determine which strategy best fits their company’s near and long-term goals.
This transmission study will leverage the analysis and modeling process that DCI executed for a consortium of 20 utilities in its recently completed Distribution Asset Life Cycle Analysis Study, in which DCI developed a credible and defensible process for estimating future replacement costs for a group of distribution assets identified by the consortium. During the project, DCI developed a methodology to generate failure frequency curves for selected distribution equipment using available data from participating utilities and created a library of failure frequency curves and failure probability distributions for each of the project’s seven assets.
The final deliverable of the distribution study is a user-friendly, Web-based model that allows companies to evaluate the financial and reliability impact of different asset management strategies. Once asset inventories are entered into the model, users can either define a unique failure distribution for each asset using their own data or rely on default failure curves derived from consortium data. The Distribution Asset Life Cycle Analysis Model is now available to the entire electric industry on a subscription basis.
