A reliability-based strategy for replacing breakers at transmission stations

This paper describes a simple and practical reliability-based strategy for replacing breakers at transmission stations. The proposed strategy assumes that a set of breakers has already been identified for replacement at a transmission station and the strategy establishes the ranking order of the replacement. The proposed strategy ensures that the breaker replacement outages have minimum impacts on the station performance indices. The strategy accounts for a number of factors that affect the station performance. The factors include the station configuration, reliability of each station equipment, station performance indices and other station equipment that may be taken out of service for safety concerns. The proposed replacement strategy is illustrated using a Hydro One's transmission station.