Power: Evaluating system reliability: When, why, and how often do power systems fail? Such knowledge is invaluable in increasing uptime while holding costs in line

Obtaining the right relationship between a power system's reliability — namely, its ability to provide a continuous supply to its customers — and the system's cost has been a target of power system planners for a number of decades. And this objective still serves as a major motivation for the development of quantitative techniques for evaluating power system reliability. All three sectors of the system “ generation, transmission, and distribution “ are of interest. However, the biggest challenge is the transmission sector — which, unlike its generation and distribution counterparts, does not lend itself to straightforward analysis. (The structure of a power system was discussed by Donald Ewart in his article, “Whys and wherefores of power system blackouts,” Apr., p. 36.)