Study on Advanced Maintenance Strategies and Asset Management for Substation Equipment in Japan: Survey on Asset Management Methods for Strategic Investment Judgments

Study on the advanced maintenance strategies and the asset management for the substation equipment is enthusiastically taken in place in Japan by the engineers from utilities and manufactures. This work is a part of the ETRA (Electric Technology Research Association) in Japan, where most of the Japanese utilities and manufactures cooperate with each other to address various issues that need to be improved or overcome for upwards of 80 years. The following working groups are organized in this study; “Investigation of the transition of substation equipment quantity, trend analysis of failures”, “Analysis of the degradation mechanisms of substation equipment and investigation of maintenance strategy”, “Investigation of recent technologies for advance maintenance strategies” and “Survey and research on asset management methods for strategic investment judgments”. This paper describes achievement of “Survey and research on asset management methods for strategic investment judgments”. First, the approach of maintenance and replacement planning for substation equipment in Japanese utilities are illustrated by the evaluation procedure applying asset management methods. Next, the results of literature survey on main asset management methods for condition evaluation of equipment and evaluation of consequence (such as importance in power grid and environmental impacts). Especially asset management methods applied in domestic and overseas utilities are categorized with evaluation target and evaluation factors, and an overview of each method is investigated. Furthermore, the case studies are conducted along the approach of maintenance and replacement planning for substation equipment in Japanese utilities to demonstrate the approach. In these case studies the Japanese power grid model is incorporated and quantification of Evaluation Factor, evaluation results are presented.