Impact of altered maintenance cycles on OPEX regarding HV equipment

Nowadays the optimized use of financial resources plays a central role in all areas and hence also in electric power companies. Consequential the utilities are anxious to keep the level of the operational expenditures (OPEX) as low as possible. The determination of the capital and operational expenditures (CAPEX and OPEX) will be done with the aid of an evaluated ageing model for 110-kV circuit-breakers. The ageing model was implemented with the simulation software Powersim Studio
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which is based on system dynamics. In this paper the influence of changed overhaul cycles and failure rates on OPEX will be investigated in order to find an optimum relation between these two parameters.