Getting the most from your reliability budget

Many utilities are faced with the problem of shrinking budgets while continuing to maintain or improve the level of service to their customers. Customer expectations have changed and, as a result, maintaining or improving reliability can be very expensive and elusive. It is not easy to define what the customer expectations are in many cases. Reliability programs and initiatives have been in place at many utilities for a number of years and, as a result, much of the low hanging fruit has been picked. All of this leads to a need for developing more detailed methods for analyzing system improvements to determine which are the most effective. This paper addresses how to define the benefit of reliability improvement techniques, how to perform a basic cost benefit analysis, and a process for prioritizing work based on reliability and cost impact. Although the amount of available funding will vary greatly between utilities, budget limitations are a fact of life for all, regardless of the source of capital funding. The challenge is to maintain an acceptable level of reliability within that budget. It's a basic truth that if you don't invest in the system, service availability and reliability will ultimately degrade.