Distribution system reliability improvements justified by increased oil production

Due to increasing competitive pressures, as well as customer demands, there is renewed service reliability interest in the electric power industry Thi s paper discusses the reliability improvement of overhead distribution feed ers serving oil-pumping facilities, Instantaneous tripping of the substatio n circuit breaker, followed by immediate reclosing, can be effective in res toring service for temporary faults on the line. However, any fault on the overhead system results in significant lost production since all pumps serv ed by the feeder are interrupted, and some of the deep,well pumps have long restart times. An effective means of improving reliability is the use of a n additional level of sectionalization. By designing the system with optimi zed layers of reliability zones, the total barrels of oil produced in a giv en year will increase dde to the reduction in average down time per pump, T he engineering study cost justified additional equipment installation to im prove reliability based on the value of the increased production. In additi on to the reliability improvement study methodology, a discussion of the ec onomic justification is included in the paper.