Reliability Assessment of Medium Voltage Underground Cable Network Using a Failure Prediction Method

In recent years, electricity supply has become the driving force behind economic growth in many cities, urban areas and businesses around the world. As a result, utilities are under pressure to supply reliable electricity to their customers at all times. This paper emphasizes the importance of understanding underground cable failure in order to improve reliability and asset management decisions with respect to the underground distribution networks, which is a challenge and is costly. It presents the analysis of medium voltage underground cables for a case study in the City of Tshwane’s substation, with the focus on identifying the causes of cable failures and present solutions. This is necessary as the quality of supply is tightly monitored by the national regulator. The failure data analysis for reliability is based on failure prediction methods and correlations of various variables such as network loading and seasonal behavior.