The effects of material management on the reliability of an electricity distribution network and modeling the logistic system for fault situations

Deregulation, opening markets and new business minded owners are placing more and more pressure on electricity distribution utilities to be cost-effective. Lappeenranta University of Technology has, together with a group of Finnish electricity distribution utilities, conducted a cost-effectiveness study of a logistics system for rural distribution networks. This study has examined an optimized logistic system, the personnel and the equipment needed in a fault situation. This paper models the dependence between material management and the reliability of electricity distribution networks. The aim is to find a solution that will result in the minimum total costs, including the costs of outages, storage, material in storage, personnel and equipment needed in the power system repair process.