Sharif Digital Repository

Recent advancements in photovoltaic (PV) system technologies have decreased their investment cost and enabled the construction of large PV farms for bulk power generations. The output power of PV farms is affected by both failure of composed components and solar radiation variability. These two factors cause the output power of PV farms be random and different from that of conventional units. Therefore, suitable models and methods should be developed to assess different aspects of PV farms integration into power systems, particularly from the system reliability viewpoint. In this context a reliability model has been developed for PV farms with considering both the uncertainties associated... 

This article proposes a multi-objective goal programming based approach with two objectives of maximizing the reliability and minimizing the placement cost of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) for full observability in power systems. The weighted sum goal programming formulation incorporates the reliability of individual PMUs and finds a placement to resolve the conflicting objectives of minimum number of PMUs cost-wise and maximum level of system-wide reliability. This multi-objective problem is formulated as a nonlinear goal programming model in which weights are associated with the objectives. The model is solved for several weight scenarios for the IEEE 14, 30, 57 and 118 bus test systems.... 

In this paper, a Markov model for reliability analysis of transmission lines equipped with a dynamic thermal rating (DTR) system is proposed. Moreover, a fuzzy procedure is proposed to determine an annual equivalent fuzzy DTR number to represent hourly variations of the line DTR. To implement the fuzzy annual DTR in composite system reliability analysis, an interactive method resolution technique for solving fuzzy optimization problems is developed. This method is chosen to address the fuzzy constraints associated with the lines equipped with the DTR system. Numerical results are presented using the 24-bus IEEE RTS, and demonstrate the validity of the proposed approaches  

Of particular interest to restrict the short-circuit level of interconnected power systems is to exploit fault current limiter (FCL) technologies. FCLs let the system planners devise new reliable and rather economical substation configurations and provide the possibility of proposing a promising cost-effective and prompt solution to the fault current over duty problem in the existing substations. This paper attempts to assess reliability of substation architectures accommodating the FCL operation and, besides, numerically investigates the FCL's impacts on the substation reliability indices. In order to clarify the proposed approach, two case studies with and without FCL are analyzed and... 

This paper presents a novel approach for evaluating the reliability of protective systems taking into account its components reliability. In this paper, a previously proposed extended model is used for a directional over- current scheme. In the extended model, the impacts of individual protective components are taken into account. An optimum routine test schedule is determined for each protective component as a separate unit. A comparison is made to show that the proposed approach has excellence over conventional routine test inspections. Impacts of factors such as circuit breaker inadvertent opening, required time for performing routine test inspections, human mistakes and self-checking and... 

Different models have been proposed for deposition of asphaltene on reservoir rocks that due to complexity of asphaltene nature, most of them have not been productive. Here, a reliable model is proposed which despite of previous models, considers the change in asphaltene saturation in the core. The obtained experimental data in the laboratory was used for model validation. In this work, a series of core flooding tests was carried out in presence of connate water at different solvent-oil volume ratios. Pressure drop was measured at three different terminals along the core. The obtained experimental data as well as mass balance equations, momentum equation, asphaltene deposition and... 

In this paper, some models have been introduced for dynamic thermal modeling of cast-resin transformers which are based on genetic algorithm. A typical 400kVA cast-resin transformer has been selected and the model parameters are estimated and validated with the help of experimental data extracted from different load cycles. The estimated models are used to generate a reliability model for cast-resin dry-type transformers and the effects of variation in load, ambient temperature and atmosphere conditions on the reliability of castresin transformer are illustrated. As it will be shown in this paper, the effects of working conditions on the life-time of insulation in dry-type transformers is... 

Protective relay technologies have evolved from single-function electromechanical and static relays to modern multifunction digital relays over the past few years. Protection systems play a vital role in maintaining a desirable level of reliability in power systems. Thus, their own reliability should be evaluated and any cause of their malfunction should be fully comprehended. In this paper, a new reliability model is proposed that associates protection system failures to four main causes: 1) relay hardware, 2) relay software, 3) ancillary equipment, and 4) human error. In addition, this model can take other aspects of the protection system into consideration, such as human error during... 

Probabilistic analyses of a wide-area measurement system (WAMS) would require equivalent reliability models for its components which include phasor measurement units (PMUs). In this paper, the reliability modeling of PMU is proposed and the proposed model is extended to consider options for the PMU hardware. The Markov process is employed to analyze the proposed model and to present an equivalent two-state model of PMUs. Reliability parameters of PMU are estimated with major difficulties associated with limited and uncertain data. In this paper, uncertainties are taken into account to achieve more realistic estimates of PMU characteristics. Fuzzy sets along with reliability analyses and... 

Reliability evaluation of multiterminal HVDC systems has received very little attention in the past. This paper presents reliability modeling and analysis of an HVDC transmission system incorporating a voltage-sourced converter (VSC) tapping station. The use of VSC tapping stations enables the supply of power along the route to areas with comparatively little consumption. In this paper, a comprehensive detailed reliability model is developed and then converted to a manageable and computationally efficient model. Using this equivalent reliability model, various reliability indices are calculated at the load point of the system and the impacts of the VSC tapping station on these indices are... 

This paper proposes and evaluates Low-overhead, Reliable Switch (LRS) architecture to enhance the reliability of Network-on-Chips (NoCs). The proposed switch architecture exploits information and hardware redundancies to eliminate retransmission of faulty flits. The LRS architecture creates a redundant copy of each newly received flit and stores the redundant flit in a duplicated flit buffer that is associated with the incoming channel of the flit. Flit buffers in the LRS are equipped with information redundancy to detect probable bit flip errors. When an error is detected in a flit buffer, its duplicated buffer is used to recover the correct value of the flit. In this way, the propagation... 

The Burr XII distribution can closely approximate many other well-known probability density functions such as the normal, gamma, lognormal, exponential distributions as well as Pearson type I, II, V, VII, IX, X, XII families of distributions. Considering a wide range of shape and scale parameters of the Burr XII distribution, it can have an important role in reliability modeling, risk analysis and process capability estimation. However, estimating parameters of the Burr XII distribution can be a complicated task and the use of conventional methods such as maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and moment method (MM) is not straightforward. Some tables to estimate Burr XII parameters have been... 

This paper proposes a reliability model for the electrical subassemblies of geared wind turbine systems with induction generators. The model is derived considering the failure of main subassemblies and their parameters are calculated. A productivity comparison is performed between the selected wind turbine systems including reliability issues. Two methods of modification for variable-speed wind turbines with Doubly Fed Induction Generators (DFIG) to improve their availability are finally suggested  

This paper proposes for wind turbines (WTs) an analytical reliability method, used on other engineering systems, to compare the reliability of different turbine concepts. The main focus of the paper is to compare the reliability of geared generator and direct-drive concept WTs. Modification methods are also recommended for improving the availability of WTs and geared generator concept incorporating doubly fed induction generator  

This paper presents a novel approach for evaluating the reliability of protective systems taking into account its components reliability. In this paper, a previously proposed extended model is used for Directional Overcurrent scheme. In the extended model, the impacts of individual protective components are taken into account. An optimum routine test schedule is determined for each protective component as a separate unit. A comparison is made to show that the proposed approach has excellence over conventional routine test inspections. Impacts of factors such as circuit breaker inadvertent opening, required time for performing routine test inspections, human mistakes and self-checking and... 

Advances in semiconductor technology have made integration of multiple processing cores into one single die a promising trend towards increasing processing performance, lowering power consumption, and increasing reliability for embedded systems. Multicore processors, due to their intrinsic redundancies, are good choices for critical embedded systems for which the reliability is a crucial component. In this paper, an aging-aware adaptive fault tolerance method for DVFS-enabled multicore processors is presented. The analytical results show 3 to 6 order of magnitude increase in reliability of the system without addition of cores or redundant software. By using an aging-aware approach, the... 

In this paper, an analytical approach for the reliability modeling of large wind farms is presented. A systematic method based on frequency and duration approach is utilized to model a wind farm like a multistate conventional unit, where the probability, frequency of occurrence, and departure rate of each state can be obtained using the regional wind regime of wind farm and wind turbine characteristics. The proposed method is capable of finding both annual frequency and average time of load curtailment analytically in the presence of wind power. A wind farm in the northern region of Iran with the wind speed registration of one year is studied in this paper. To accommodate time-varying... 

This paper evaluates the reliability impact of UPFC application in power system. The paper proposes a new reliability model for the UPFC which is capable of considering different operating states of UPFC. The model is then applied to a test system to study the reliability impacts of UPFC. The impacts of operating points of different states of the model on the system reliability are analyzed. The role of model parameters in reliability impacts of UPFC is analyzed through the sensitivity analysis. A comparative study is finally conducted to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model compare to that of existing UPFC reliability models. The abilities and deficiencies of the proposed... 

This paper probes the impact of utilizing an IPFC on the reliability indices of interconnected power systems. First, a concise presentation of IPFC and its structure are provided and the reliability model of two unequally-rated parallel transmission lines equipped with IPFC is then extracted. The assumed IPFC is composed from two parallel converting bridges associated with each line. Afterwards, based-on equivalent assisting unit approach, different commonly-used adequacy indices including the loss of load expectation (LOLE), loss of energy expectation (LOEE) and system minutes (SM) are calculated. A set of numerical analyses are conducted to illustrate the sensitivity of these indices with... 

One of the most important aspects in evaluating system reliability is to have a complete understanding of the engineering implications of the system and its associated components. The next step involved in reliability assessment is to appropriately model the system components to represent their characteristics and functions in the overall system. The unified power flow controller (UPFC) is an important flexible AC transmission system controller that can be used to enhance power system reliability. A complete reliability model of a UPFC is developed. A UPFC consists of three subsystems, and a reliability model associated with each subsystem is developed. The individual equivalent models are...