Electrical Power and Energy Systems 49 (2013) 455–463

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Electrical Power and Energy Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijepes

Reliability and component importance analysis of substation automation systems

Hamze Hajian-Hoseinabadi *
Department of Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper aims to present a comprehensive technique to quantitatively assess the reliability of substa-
Received 17 November 2009 tion automation systems. The technique is based on the tie-sets methodology. In order to demonstrate
Accepted 7 June 2010 the application of the proposed technique, a variety of substation automation architectures is first intro-
Available online 2 July 2010
duced. The associated reliability block diagrams as well as the exact system reliability are then given. The
impacts and the degree of importance of various components on the reliability of substation automation
Keywords: systems are presented. Two suitable measures of importance are selected. The first is the Birnbaum’s
Component importance
measure used to determine the bottleneck of the system reliability. The second measure uses criticality
Quantitative reliability assessment
Reliability block diagram
importance to diagnose failures and generating repair or inspection checklists.
Substation automation system Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction (FTA) [5]. An effective approach is presented in this paper to quan-

System automation is the control of power system apparatus
operations to take the place of the human functions of observation,
decision, and action. Substation automation refers to using intelli-
gent electronic device (IED) data within the substation and control
commands from remote users to control the power system devices
within the substation [1]. The IEDs are communicated by fiber-op-
tic due to the following reasons [2]:
– It isolates equipment from hazardous and damaging ground
potential rise.
– It is immune to radio frequency interference and other electro-
magnetic interference.
– It eliminates data errors due to communications ground-loop
problems.
Substation automation designers are faced with many choices
about system topology, primary and backup devices, and redun-
dant paths. Some of the factors that a designer considers in select-
ing the automation components and designing the system are
equipment costs, installation and commissioning costs, perfor-
mance, security and reliability [3]. This paper is concerned with
the reliability of component in the selection and design process.
Quantitative reliability evaluation of a substation automation sys-
tem (SAS) can be a significant analytical problem. There are some
previous works which consider reliability of the substation control
network topologies from a qualitative point of view [2–4]. The
technique used in these works is based on the Fault Tree Analysis
* Tel.: +98 913 313 0258.
E-mail address: hamze.hajian@gmail.com
titatively assess the reliability of the SAS. The technique is based on
the tie-sets methodology. Furthermore, this paper aims at investi-
gating the reliability indices to identify the critical components in a
SAS. The importance analysis for SASs was not covered in the liter-
ature so far. This paper selects two appropriate measures of the
importance including Birnbaum’s measure and criticality impor-
tance measure.
2. Architectures of substation automation systems
2.1. Substation automation components
A typical SAS consists of various components and levels. The
substation control point is often located in a special shielded
room and provides an overview across the whole station. Also,
it provides the Human Machine Interface (HMI) as central place
for substation operation. The HMI serves to operate and supervise
the substation. In addition, all general purpose hardware, screens
and printers are concentrated on station level. A server collects
data from all of the local devices and creates a substation data-
base. The HMI uses data from this database. In this paper, the
server is based on industrial personal computers (IPC). A commu-
nication gateway provides data access and control from a Net-
work Control Center (NCC). It needs a physical coupling to the
wide area communication connection used by NCC, and a proto-
col converter, which interprets the messages according to the
NCC protocol and translates them to action in the SAS. The sta-
tion level functions rely on data exchange with the bay level
functions, sending down commands as well as configuration
parameters and data, and retrieving the process state and locally
captured fault and disturbance data. The physical bay level is

0142-0615/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijepes.2010.06.012
456 H. Hajian-Hoseinabadi / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 49 (2013) 455–463

close to the switchyard equipment. Modern control and protec-
tion IEDs associated with the bay level can be incorporated into
several cubicles designated as bay control units (BCUs). Further-
more, as communication plays a very critical role in a SAS, both
Ethernet switch (ESW) and Ethernet interface (EI) should be
modeled. The Ethernet interface may be referred to as either
Ethernet port or Ethernet communication media [6]. The Ethernet
port is assumed to be a part of the host IED and its reliability is
included in the overall MTTF of the IED. Accordingly, we consider
only Ethernet communication media rather than Ethernet port in
the reliability models. It has to be noted that, due to the impor-
tance of DC power supply (DCP) in the control system, the DCP is
included in the reliability model of the automation system in the
form of a series component with other elements.
2.2. Various substation automation architectures
Consider the five different substation automation architectures
shown in Figs. 1–5, with different levels of redundancy, availabil-
ity, performance and of course cost [7].
A typical simple cascading (or bus) architecture is illustrated in
Fig. 1. Each switch is connected to the previous switch or next
switch in the cascade via one of its ports. The maximum number
of switches, which can be cascaded, depends on the worst case de-
lay (latency) which can be tolerated by the system. The advantage
of simple cascading architecture is cost effective as this structure
allows for shorter wiring instead of bringing all connections to a
central point. This type of structure has some disadvantages. For
example, if one of the cascade connections is lost, all IEDs down-

Fig. 1. Architecture 1: simple cascading architecture.

Fig. 2. Architecture 2: redundant cascading architecture.

 H. Hajian-Hoseinabadi / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 49 (2013) 455–463 457

Fig. 3. Architecture 3: ring architecture.

Fig. 4. Architecture 4: star architecture.

stream of that connection are also lost. Furthermore, the worst case
delays across the cascading backbone have to be considered if the
application is very time sensitive. One way of increasing availabil-
ity is to provide redundant networks. Then, instead of a single fail-
ure causing the top event, two failures must occur to cause the
entire system to fail. A redundant cascading architecture is illus-
trated in Fig. 2. This architecture provides a higher level of avail-
ability than simple cascading architecture. A typical ring
architecture is shown in Fig. 3. It is very similar to the simple cas-
cading architecture except that the loop is closed. This provides
some level of redundancy if any of the ring connections fail. This
type of architecture has some advantages such as cost effective.
Also rings offer redundancy in the form of immunity to physical
breaks in the network. However, similar to the cascading architec-
ture, latency of the ring architecture has to be considered if the
application is very sensitive. A typical star architecture is shown
in Fig. 4. Switch 1 is referred to as the ‘backbone’ switch since all
of the other switches uplink to it in order to form a star configura-
tion. This type of configuration offers the least amount of latency.
Compared to the other architectures, the star architecture has
the lowest latency. However, this type of configuration has no
redundancy. If the backbone switch fails, all switches are isolated.
Finally, a hybrid (star/ring) architecture, combining star and ring
architectures is shown in Fig. 5. This architecture provides a high
level of availability and is immune to numerous types of faults.
3. SAS reliability assessment
Before developing the reliability models for the substation auto-
mation structures, it is necessary to clearly define their scope. A
typical automation system for an electric power substation con-
sists of up to three hierarchical levels. The hierarchical levels
(HLs) are the remote control point (HL 1), the substation control
point (HL 2) and the bay control point (HL 3). The control
458 H. Hajian-Hoseinabadi / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 49 (2013) 455–463
Fig. 5. Architecture 5: hybrid architecture.
command can be initiated from a remote control point (HL 1) or
from the substation control point (HL 2). In other words, the con-
trol functionality of local bay level is ignored.
3.1. Reliability block diagram
The first step in reliability calculation is to develop the reliabil-
ity block diagram (RBD) which is a success-oriented network
describing the function of the system. The RBD shows the logical
connections of components needed to fulfill a specified system
function [8], where the components that are used together to per-
form a function are put in series, and the redundant components
are put in parallel. It is assumed that each automation structure
has six bays with bay controllers, one station level server (IPC)
and one NCC server (NCCS) inclusive gateway function. Both SCS
server and the NCC server are completely independent from each
other. It is further assumed that the control function is considered
to be available, if one, but not more than one bay is no longer con-
trollable from station level or remote. Therefore the (n  1) of n
condition is considered. With the above assumptions, the reliabil-
ity block diagrams associated with these automation structures are
established and shown in Fig. 6.
It can be seen from the diagrams that the NCC control is func-
tionally redundant to station level control. The tie-sets (minimal
paths) method is used to calculate the system reliability based
on the RBDs shown in Fig. 6. A tie-set is a set of system components
whose functioning ensures that the system functions. A minimal
tie-set (path) is one in which all the components within the set
must work for the system to function, and if any one element does
not function then the system is not guaranteed to work. A tie-set
will fail if just one component of the tie-set fails and all the system
tie-sets must fail for the system to fail [9]. Assuming component
independence, and denoting the probability of occurrence of tie-
set Ti by PðT i Þ, the probability of a given architecture success (avail-
ability) for n minimal tie-sets is specified by [10]:
Rsys ¼ PðT 1 [ T 2 [ T 3 [ . . . [ T n Þ:
3.2. System reliability
If failure rate of component i is constant, the reliability of this
component is expressed as:
Ri ðtÞ ¼ Pi ðtÞ ¼ eki t ; ð2Þ
where ki failure rate of component i.
The reliabilities of DC power system, bay control units, Ethernet
interface, Ethernet switches, Human Machine Interface, NCC server
and industrial personal computer can be designated as PDCP, PBCU,
PEI, PESW, PHMI, PNCCS and PIPC respectively. Furthermore, the reliabil-
ity of architecture i can be shown as RðiÞ sys . It is assumed that the
components of the same type have the same reliability. With refer-
ence to Fig. 6, all the architectures have two minimal paths.
The system reliability of architecture 1 is
ð1Þ
Rsys ðtÞ ¼ 6P DCP P 6ESW P5BCU P7EI PIPC PHMI PNCCS
þ 6PDCP P6ESW P5BCU P6EI PIPC PHMI þ 6PDCP P6ESW P5BCU P6EI PNCCS
 5PDCP P6ESW P6BCU P7EI PIPC PHMI  5PDCP P6ESW P6BCU P7EI PNCCS
þ 5PDCP P6ESW P6BCU P8EI PIPC PHMI PNCCS : ð3Þ
The system reliability of architecture 2 is (after being
simplified)
ð2Þ
Rsys ðtÞ ¼ P DCP P 6ESW P5BCU P6EI ð2  P6ESW Þð6  5PBCU :PEI ÞðPIPC PHMI ð1
 P NCCS PEI Þ þ PNCCS Þ: ð4Þ
The system reliability of architecture 3 is
ð3Þ
Rsys ðtÞ ¼ 6P DCP P 5BCU P7EI P5ESW PIPC PHMI PNCCS P2ESW
þ 6PDCP P5BCU P6EI P5ESW PIPC PHMI PESW
þ 6PDCP P5BCU P6EI P5ESW PNCCS P ESW
 5PDCP P6BCU P7EI P6ESW PIPC PHMI PESW
 5PDCP P6BCU P7EI P6ESW PNCCS P ESW
þ 5PDCP P6BCU P8EI P6ESW PIPC PHMI PNCCS P2ESW : ð5Þ
The system reliability of architecture 4 is
ð1Þ
ð4Þ
Rsys ðtÞ ¼ 6P DCP P 6ESW P 5BCU P 7EI PIPC PHMI PNCCS
þ 6PDCP P6ESW P5BCU P6EI PIPC PHMI þ 6PDCP P6ESW P5BCU P6EI PNCCS
 5PDCP P7ESW P6BCU P7EI PIPC PHMI  5PDCP P7ESW P6BCU P7EI PNCCS
þ 5PDCP P7ESW P6BCU P8EI PIPC PHMI PNCCS : ð6Þ
 H. Hajian-Hoseinabadi / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 49 (2013) 455–463 459

(a) RBD of architecture 1

(b) RBD of architecture 2

(c) RBD of architecture 3

(d) RBD of architecture 4

(e) RBD of architecture 5

Fig. 6. Reliability block diagrams of various substation automation architectures.

The system reliability of architecture 5 is (after being 3.3. Discussion

simplified)
7 5 6 (1) Simple cascading architecture (architecture 1) has the low-
Rð5Þ
sys ðtÞ ¼ P DCP P ESW P BCU P EI ð2  P ESW Þð6  P BCU P EI P ESW Þ est reliability compare to others as it has no-redundant
 ðPIPC P HMI ð1  PNCCS P EI PESW Þ þ PNCCS Þ: ð7Þ Ethernet switches.
(2) By adding redundant Ethernet switches, the MTTF of cas-
The system reliabilities of all architectures can be calculated cading architecture increases (compare architectures 1
using the reliability data listed in Table 1 [3,11]. and 2). Compared to other architectures, the availability
The system unavailability is calculated by
Q sys ¼ 1  Rsys ðtÞ: ð8Þ
The system unavailability versus time is shown in Fig. 7.
Both unavailability and reliability of the system, at mission time
of 1000 h, are listed in Table 2.
Furthermore, Fig. 8 shows the Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) of
all architectures. It has to be noted that, MTTF can be defined as:
Z 1
MTTF ¼ Rsys ðtÞdt: ð9Þ
0

Table 1
Unavailability of substation automation components.

Components MTTF (yr) Failure rate (yr1)

DCP 109.6 0.00912
IPC 14.3 0.06993
NCCS 14.3 0.06993
EI 300 0.00333
ESW 11.5 0.08696
HMI 10 0.10000
BCU 103.5 0.00966
Fig. 7. System unavailability versus time of various architectures.
460 H. Hajian-Hoseinabadi / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 49 (2013) 455–463
Table 2
System unavailability and reliability at mission time of 1000 h.
Architecture Qsys  103
1 58.98607
2 4.57636
3 3.44176
4 12.92223
5 3.53899
Fig. 8. MTTF comparison of various architectures.
of redundant cascading design is considerably more than
either simple cascading or star topologies. Furthermore,
the availability of redundant cascading architecture is rela-
tively less than both ring (architecture 3) and hybrid (archi-
tecture 5) topologies.
(3) The star design is more reliable than simple cascading
design, but the availability of this topology is considerably
less than other topologies. This is reasonable since this archi-
tecture has no redundancy. As mentioned in Section 2, if the
backbone switch fails, all switches are isolated. Compared to
other architectures, at mission time of 1000 h, the star
design is approximately 4.6 times more reliable than the
simple cascading topology. While this design is nearly 2.8,
3.8 and 3.7 times less reliable than the redundant cascading,
ring and hybrid topologies, respectively.
(4) Both the ring and hybrid topologies are the most reliable
architectures in comparison with the others. For example,
at mission time of 1000 h, the ring design is about 17.1,
1.3 and 3.8 times more reliable than the simple cascading,
redundant cascading and star designs, respectively.
4. Component importance analysis
Importance measures in reliability engineering are used to
identify weak areas of a system and signify the role of components
in either causing or contributing to proper functioning of the sys-
tem. In other words, component importance measures are used
to measure the effect of the reliability of individual components
on the overall system reliability. From the design view-point, it is
crucial to identify the weaknesses of the system and how the fail-
ure of each individual component affects proper functioning of the
system; so that efforts can be spent properly to improve the sys-
tem reliability [12]. From the operational view-point, the compo-
nent importance measure may be used to allocate inspection and
maintenance resources to the most important components. Several
importance measures such as Birnbaum’s measure [13], Fussell–
Vesely’s measure [14], risk achievement worth, risk reduction
worth [15] and criticality importance for components have been
proposed in the past. The Birnbaum’s measure and criticality
importance measure are used in this paper to quantify the compo-
nent importance in a SAS.
Rsys (%)
94.10139
99.54236
4.1. Birnbaum’s measure
99.65582
98.70778 In 1969 Birnbaum [13] introduced the concept of importance
99.64610 and developed a probabilistic measure of component reliability
importance. This measure is denoted by IB(i|t) and defined as the
probability that component i is critical to system failure, i.e. when
i fails it causes the system to pass from a working to a failed state.
Analytically, Birnbaum’s measure of importance of component i at
time t is
@Rsys ðtÞ
IB ðijtÞ ¼ ð10Þ
@Pi ðtÞ
where i = 1, 2, . . . , n.
The Birnbaum’s importance of component i can be interpreted
as the rate at which the system reliability improves as the reliabil-
ity of component i is improved. Birnbaum’s measure can also be
written as
IB ðijtÞ ¼ hð1i ; Rsys ðtÞÞ  hð0i ; Rsys ðtÞÞ; ð11Þ
where h(1i, Rsys(t)) denotes the conditional probability that the sys-
tem is functioning when it is known that component i is functioning
at time t, and h(0i, Rsys(t)) denotes the conditional probability that
the system is functioning when component i is in a failed state at
time t.
From the definition, the Birnbaum’s measure may serve as a
good indicator for selecting components that are the best candi-
dates for efforts leading to improving system reliability. However,
IB(i|t) only depends on the structure of the system and reliability of
other components. It is independent of the actual reliability Pi(t) of
component i. This is a weakness of Birnbaum’s measure [8].
4.2. Criticality importance
The criticality importance ICR(i|t) is another well-known mea-
sure. As compared with Birnbaum’s measure, the reliability aspect
of the studied component is integrated into the measure. The crit-
icality importance can be defined by
IB ðijtÞ  ð1  Pi ðtÞÞ
ICR ðijtÞ ¼ : ð12Þ
1  Rsys ðtÞ
The criticality importance measures the probability of a partic-
ular component i being responsible for system failure before time t.
For component i to cause system failure, component i must be crit-
ical, and then fail. Component i will then, by failing, cause the sys-
tem to fail. When component i is repaired, the system will start
functioning again. Consequently, criticality importance is remark-
ably suitable for prioritizing maintenance actions in complicated
systems. Here, the maintenance may refer to preventive mainte-
nance, corrective maintenance or failure-finding maintenance [8].
4.3. Measure results
Since architecture 1 has the lowest reliability level, it will not be
considered further in the following component importance analy-
sis. Component importance for architectures 2–5 are presented in
Figs. 9–16. The component importance at mission time of 1000 h
and the ranking of components by their importance are listed in
Tables 3–6.
 H. Hajian-Hoseinabadi / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 49 (2013) 455–463 461

Fig. 9. Birnbaum’s measure of component importance for architecture 2.

Fig. 12. Criticality importance measure of component for architecture 3.

Fig. 10. Criticality importance measure of component for architecture 2. Fig. 13. Birnbaum’s measure of component importance for architecture 4.

Fig. 11. Birnbaum’s measure of component importance for architecture 3. Fig. 14. Criticality importance measure of component for architecture 4.
462 H. Hajian-Hoseinabadi / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 49 (2013) 455–463

Fig. 15. Birnbaum’s measure of component importance for architecture 5. Fig. 16. Criticality importance measure of component for architecture 5.

4.4. Discussion
It can be observed that the Birnbaum’s measure and criticality
importance measure may lead to different rankings. Taking archi-
tecture 3 as an example, the Birnbaum’s measures show that the
Ethernet interface is more critical than the Ethernet switches.
The Birnbaum’s measures may induce deceptive conclusions in
terms of prioritizing system maintenance. It is clear that the Ether-
net interface should be ranked lower in the maintenance checklist

Table 3
Component importance for architecture 2.

Measure EI BCU IPC NCCS HMI ESW DCP

IB 0.0347 0.0082 0.0082 0.0195 0.0082 0.0549 0.9965
Order: DCP > ESW > EI > NCCS > (HMI = IPC = BCU)
ICR 0.0029 0.0018 0.0143 0.0340 0.0204 0.1186 0.2267
Order: DCP > ESW > NCCS > HMI > IPC > EI > BCU

Table 4
Component importance for architecture 3.

Measure EI ESW1 ESW2 BCU IPC NCCS HMI ESW ser. 3 DCP
B
I 0.0998 0.0177 0.0289 0.0540 0.0177 0.0289 0.0177 0.0540 0.9976
Order: DCP > EI > (ESW ser. 3 = BCU) > (ESW2 = NCCS) > (IPC = HMI = ESW1)
ICR 0.0110 0.0509 0.0831 0.0171 0.0410 0.0669 0.0586 0.1550 0.3017
Order: DCP > ESW ser.3 > ESW2 > NCCS > HMI > ESW1 > IPC > BCU > EI

Table 5
Component importance for architecture 4.

Measure EI ESW1 BCU IPC NCCS HMI ESW ser.2 DCP

IB 0.0803 0.9969 0.0535 0.0081 0.0193 0.0081 0.0535 0.9881
Order: ESW1 > DCP > EI > (ESW ser.2 = BCU) > NCCS > (HMI = IPC)
ICR 0.0024 0.7620 0.0045 0.0050 0.0119 0.0072 0.0409 0.0796
Order: ESW1 > DCP > ESW ser.2 > NCCS > HMI > IPC > BCU > EI

Table 6
Component importance for architecture 5.

Measure EI ESW1 ESW2 BCU IPC NCCS HMI ESW ser.3 ESW ser.4 DCP
IB 0.0997 0.0177 0.0289 0.0540 0.0177 0.0289 0.0177 0.0098 0.0540 0.996
Order: DCP > EI > (BCU = ESW ser.4) > (ESW2 = NCCS) > (HMI = IPC = ESW1) > ESW ser.3
ICR 0.0107 0.0495 0.0808 0.0167 0.0398 0.0651 0.0570 0.0275 0.1508 0.293
Order: DCP > ESW ser.4 > ESW2 > NCCS > HMI > ESW1 > IPC > ESW ser.3 > BCU > EI
 H. Hajian-Hoseinabadi / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 49 (2013) 455–463
than Ethernet switches. The reason for this is that although Ether-
net switches occupy similar positions in the system, the Ethernet
interface has a lower failure rate. Compared to the Birnbaum’s
measure, the criticality importance gives a more reasonable mea-
sure, indicating that the Ethernet interface is less important than
the Ethernet switches as expected. Therefore, it can be concluded
that the criticality importance measure is more effective and use-
ful. It has to be noted that, if the objective is to assist system
designers, and if the reliability of each component can be increased
by a specified amount, the Birnbaum’s measure is a suitable mea-
sure. However, if the objective is to prioritize maintenance actions,
or if improvements can be made only to components that have low
reliability, the criticality importance measure is an appropriate
one. The following observations can be made based on the critical-
ity importance measures:
(1) Ethernet interface and bay control unit: EI and BCU are the
least critical components in architectures 2–5. The reason
for this is that it is assumed that the SAS is considered to
be available, if one, but not more than one BCU is not avail-
able. Furthermore, with reference to Table 1, BCU and EI
have the high MTTF as compared with other components,
so their importance measures are decreased.
(2) NCC server, station server and HMI: By introducing redun-
dancy in the control points (station and remote control
points), HMI, NCCS and IPC are not considerably critical
components in architectures 2–5. Also, HMI and IPC occupy
similar positions in reliability block diagrams, but MTTF of
IPC is higher than that of HMI hence HMI is more critical
than IPC.
(3) DC power system: DCP is the most critical components in
architectures 2, 3 and 5 as failure of the DC power system
can cause inoperability of most of the local and remote con-
trol functions. In the star architecture, the DCP is not more
critical than backbone switch (ESW1).
(4) Ethernet switch: In architecture 2, ESW is more critical than
other components except DCP, since if one of the Ethernet
switches is lost, every BCU downstream of that Ethernet
switch is also lost. In the star architecture, backbone switch
(ESW1) is the most critical component, because if the back-
bone switch fails, all switches (Ethernet switches series 2)
are isolated. It has to be noted that, Ethernet switches series
2 (ESW2) connected to BCUs are less important than ESW1
and DCP. In the ring architecture, ESWs connected to BCUs
(ESW series 3) are more critical than ESWs connected to
servers (ESW1, ESW2). Furthermore, all ESWs are more
important than other components except DCP. In the hybrid
architecture, by introducing redundancy in the Ethernet
switches series 3, these switches are not remarkably critical
components. Moreover, ESWs connected to BCUs (ESW ser-
ies 4) are more critical than ESWs connected to servers
(ESW1, ESW2). In other words, ESW series 4 are more critical
than other components except DCP.
463
5. Conclusion
Firstly, this paper presents an approach for reliability assess-
ments of various substation automation systems. The proposed
technique is applied to five substation automation architectures
to examine the effectiveness of the technique. The results predict
the percentage of time, on average, in which the system is able
to perform the control actions. Also, the results show that both
the ring and hybrid topologies are the most reliable architectures
in comparison with the others. Finally, this paper aims at selecting
the reliability indices to identify the critical components in a sub-
station automation system. The Birnbaum’s measure is recom-
mended as a quantifier of component importance for identifying
the bottleneck of the system reliability. The criticality importance
is suggested as another important quantifier which is useful for
prioritizing maintenance actions. The criticality importance analy-
ses show that the DC power system and Ethernet switches are the
most critical components in all architectures.
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