Managing assets using infrequent inspections

The asset management of electricity networks is driven by the need for policies that provide reliability and safety at a competitive cost. It is generally believed that the key to achieving this lies in controlling the condition of the assets. This is becoming increasingly possible as technological improvements have led to the development of information systems for the collection of condition information and improved noninvasive tests for condition. Hence databases of condition information are starting to become available and these will soon become more comprehensive and widespread. This trend is in turn driving the development of methods for asset management based on condition measures and these are the subject of this paper.