MALAVIYA NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF

TECHNOLOGY, JAIPUR

The Probability and Timing of Power System

Restoration
GUIDED BY:
MR. VINOD SAHAI PAREEK
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

SUBMITTED BY:
AJAY CHAUDHARY
2012UEE1583

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
LEARNING THEORY
CASE STUDIES
CONCLUSIONS

INTRODUCTION
Power restoration following a major outage is known to be both
complex and unique.
To estimate probability of power restoration, a new simple and
holistic probability curve is recommended that is physically-based.
The human contribution to outcomes such as accidents, failures and
errors is estimated as from 65% to 90%, depending on the definition
adopted, with purely mechanical or component failures making up
the balance. Therefore, to predict the probability of successful or
conversely unsuccessful recovery actions must also involve learning
and error correction from and during experience.

SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF NON-STANDARD

AND COMPLEX RESTORATION
Previous analyses of the probability and time of recovery from
power outages have focused on estimating mean or average outage
times, on system and component analysis, on restoration objectives
and procedures, and on assessment and repair planning.
Use of average or expected times for outage or recovery actions
masks the details of another known and key issue. That is, error
correction and outage duration do not follow usual statistical
distributions.
Previous work analysed outage time data using standard statistical
fits to times of outage restoration (TOR).

Time of Restoration

Time
Time
of the
Day

Day
of the
Week

External

Consequence

Month

Number
of Phase
Affected

Protection
Device
Activation

Weather
Condition

Fig: The categories under investigation for Time of Restoration

Source: IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 11, No. 3, July 1996

Outage
Cause

 By treating the entire system and the actions taken as inseparable, the
present approach is distinct from previous outage analysis methods that
use task decomposition.
Instead, the emergent and dynamic learning behaviour of and outcomes
from the entire system are described using probability and failure rates.
This is a fundamental assumption behind the theory.

LEARNING THEORY
In reliability terminology, for failures observed out of total, the
failure probability, is the ratio of the number of failures to the total
number possible, and is the complement of the reliability.
So,
(A1)
The outcome probability is then just the cumulative distribution
function, CDF, conventionally written as, the fraction that fails by ,
so
(A2)

 where the failure rate, for failures out of total

(A3)
The Learning Hypothesis states that the rate of decrease in the outcome
or error rate with increasing experience is proportional to the error rate,
so that allowing for a finite non-zero minimum failure rate, , with a
learning rate constant,
(A4)

 Integrating this minimum error rate equation (MERE), the failure rate is
obtained as an exponential equation that shows a decline due to learning,
i.e.

(A5)
, the failure rate at the initial experience, accumulated up to or at the
initial outcome(s), so that for the very first, rare or initial outcome.
Carrying out the integration of (A5) from an initial experience, to any
interval, the probability of an outcome (in the present case ROOP) is a
double exponential, thus forming a bathtub curve given by

(A6)

 To compare against data, it is convenient to non-dimensionalize (A5)

using the known or estimated minimum observed failure rate, and
maximum experience,as follows:

(A7)

LEARNING HYPOTHESIS AS AN EMERGENT

THEORY
The
simplest learning hypothesis is adopted using the

fact that humans (Homo sapiens) learn from their

mistakes.
The learning hypothesis states that the rate of
decrease of the outcome or error rate with increasing
experience is proportional to the outcome or error rate.
The resulting dynamic failure rate, for any relevant
experience or risk exposure measure, is given by:

 The two free parameters, the learning constant, and the minimum
achievable failure rate,, are physically-based. Their values have been
derived from comparisons to millions of outcome data for diverse
technological systems; they are and or one outcome in 200 000 risk
exposure or accumulated experience hours.
The convenient non-dimensional form is the Universal Learning Curve
(ULC) correlation.
The probability, , of any outcome as a function of experience,

CASE STUDY: LOSING AND RESTORING

POWER DISTRIBUTION IN LARGE GRIDS
The trend in power recovery or fraction restored with time should be
exponential.
Such a trend occured for power restoration in large national grids in
Belgium, Sweden, and France, where outages of 2400 to 28 000
MW (e) loads had similar trends in restoration time, h, and
percentage load recovery, L.

Fig: Rate of Reconnection of Load

Source: IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. PWRS-2, No. 2, May 1987

 The total experience, learning

opportunity or restoration
timescale, is the ratio of the
elapsed outage time, h, to the
known total restoration time, H,
for each outage.
Plot shows the resulting
normalized data where the fit
follows the ULC learning
curve,()

Source: IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 28, No. 1,

February 2013

 The learning theory is next tested against power outage recovery rate
data for an entire Power Distribution System.
Individuals in the working repair crews, management and recovery
planners behave collectively as an integrated decision making and
learning system.
The available typical restoration time data sample, is a composite
count of many different outage restorations.
Transcribing and counting the total data points plotted as a function of
the time of restoration (h) or TOR, the failure or non-restoration rate per
unit outage or restoration time was calculated.

 The calculated failure or outage

rates are compared to the twoparameter fit from learning theory,
These numerical values imply that
the minimum restoration rate or
maximum interval attained was
about 1 per 60 hours, with an
average learning timescale of
about 5 hours.

Source: IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol.

28, No. 1, February 2013

CASE STUDY: DYNAMIC LOCAL URBAN

POWER FAILURE AND RESTORATION
A dynamic and time-varying Case Study is the recent and welldocumented blackout in Queens, an urban Borough of New York
City in Long Island County, in July 2006, affecting about 175 000
people, otherwise known as the LIC Outage or Queens
Blackout.
The Long Island City network is a low voltage distributed network
where primary feeders (consisting of cables and joints), operating at
27 000 volts (27 kV) originating at an area substation supply
network transformers.

 According
to the sequence of events, initially one local 27 kV power line (called

a feeder) failed out of 22 such lines.

It was repaired and later failed again, eventually causing some 39 additional
(dependent) feeder failures, with multiple repairs, restorations, and cascading
failures over several days.
The blackout and repair process duration took five to eight days before partial and
then full restoration, with many secondary events (manhole fires and transformer
overloads).
The outage and restoration data tabulation provides the LOOP and ROOP data
from 12:00 a.m. on the July 17 to 8:00 a.m. on July 21, 2006, for all the N=22
feeder lines with, n, failed feeders for any elapsed blackout or outage duration
time,
The instantaneous feeder failure rate, and the best theoretical fit to the data in
units of the number of feeders failing per outage hour is

 The calculated result is shown

in Fig., with the data.
There is an increasing chance
of power line repair, or
conversely decreasing nonrepair, such that after about 30
hours [or ], consistent with
general maximum timescale of
hours for restoration rates
observed elsewhere.
Source: IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 28, No.
1, February 2013

CASE STUDY: PREDICTING THE RESTORATION AND

RECOVERY FROM LOSS OF OFFSITE POWER FOR LARGE
GENERATING UNITS
The restoration times are now examined for reconnecting the main
grid power to large embedded commercial electric generating stations
to determine if a learning trend is also evident.
In probabilistic risk assessment for nuclear station black-out (SBO)
analyses, the focus is generally on assuring onsite restoration of
cooling within a given mission time, say, 24 to 72 hours.
By not accounting for learning, standard distribution forms are not
generally applicable, especially outside the fitting range.
This is one reason for the present proposal of using the more
mechanistic and physically reasonable learning basis.

 Fig. compares the predicted

probability of LOOP duration to
the LOOP duration data in original
report.
Basically the offsite power is
increasingly and inexorably
unlikely to be restored, since the
variation of restoration probability
with outage duration is then
always positive due to the nonzero minimum failure rate as given
by
Source: IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 28,
No. 1, February 2013

 All the LOOP events should be eventually restored, but if

power is not restored beyond, say, hours based on this
experience basis, there is increasing probability that some
major failures involve non-repair or replacement.
Formally, the increasing probability is when 0 , or when .

The
MERE/ULC probability of LOOP duration is also benchmarked with
other independent data sets. Experience or restoration time needs to be
transformed to a non-dimensional experience or risk exposure basis, .
For the grid restoration for large units, the ratio of the individual LOOP
duration, , to the total experience from all the possible accumulated
experience for all such power losses, , such that
where the total experience, Average LOOP duration,Total
number of plants operatingplant experience-hours.

Fig: Predictive capability of MERE/ULC model for the new loss of offsite power event and restoration
data (shaded diamond and square symbols), and with previous field data for commercial airline
crashes, space shuttle losses, rocket launch failures, large oil spills, and nuclear power plant
operational errors.
Source: IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 28, No. 1, February 2013

CONCLUSIONS
Predicting the probability of power restoration and the outage
duration following a loss-of-power is a major goal for power users
and generators, and a requirement for power plant designers,
operators, emergency response management, and regulators.
A new method has been proposed, based on the learning curve of
increasing probability of restoration with increasing outage duration.
It has shown the commonality of the learning behaviour intrinsic to
all homo-technological systems.