Development of an Innovative Model and a Comprehensive Statistical Analysis of the Mutual Effect Between the SAIDI and the Tele-Control Numbers: A Case Study

With over 43,000 kilometers of aerial network, the Khorasan Razavi Province electricity distribution company (KEDC) has the longest distribution network in Iran. In its capacity as a prominent organization, this company has extended the number of tele-control RTUs from 250 to 1530, increasing by more than six times since 2019. This project has resulted in the management of 1529 MW-hours of network energy in 2023. A significant improvement was also achieved in the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) (one of the most important reliability indicators in the electricity networks), which was reduced by 63% from 166 minutes in 2020 to 63 minutes in 2023. Although automation has been one of the contributing factors to this decrease, it is comprehensively addressed in this article. Furthermore, during the year 2023, 14565 close/trip commands for emergency load management of a total of 5226 MW have been executed. Since similar companies have invested in this area, one of the major challenges is the modeling and surveying of the effects of the increase in tele-control numbers on the SAIDI. For this purpose, an innovative model has been developed to establish the relationship between tele-control numbers and SAIDI. It serves as a useful reference for the comprehensive statistical analysis of the distribution network presented in this article. This model also has the advantage of calculating profits and predicting the SAIDI status of the network without implementing tele-control RTUs. The information provided here is essential for calculating the benefits of the tele-control projects and can be used to justify any investment in future projects. According to the proposed model, the SAIDI index would have increased to 147 minutes in 2023, instead of 63 minutes, without the implementation of the aforementioned project at the Khorasan Razavi electricity distribution company. Using the data provided by the other power companies, the model has demonstrated a high level of accuracy of 90 %.