Regulation of the electricity supply continuity and decision making of distribution companies about measures to be undertaken in the network

This paper deals with the utilization of the costs of penalty payments when making decisions of the distribution company on measures to be undertaken in the network. The costs of penalty payments are derived from breaching the customer's standard of the electricity supply continuity for individual consumers. A composed customer's standard with a limit of the annual number of supply interruptions and a limit of the total annual duration of supply interruptions is considered in the paper. The costs of penalty payments are first calculated for the whole 22 kV overhead distribution network depending on a different setting of the limits and then for individual feeders. Although the assessment of the costs of penalty payments for individual feeders enables the reliability of the feeders to be compared, another approach must be used for the evaluation of the contribution of a certain measure undertaken in the network (investments, operational interventions or modification of maintenance). A new method based on the potential of reducing the costs of supply interruptions may represent such an approach. In final part of the paper, the application of this method is demonstrated by the example of using a slow auto-reclosing in the overhead distribution network.