BALANCING COST AND RELIABILITY - A QUANTITATIVE STUDY AT ATLANTIC ELECTRIC

This paper documents a system improvement study conducted by Atlantic Electric (AE) Company using EPRI's reliability analytical tools. With increased emphasis on customer service, reliability and cost control, AE is striving to balance the value of supply reliability to its custo mers with the the costs of system improvement. The paper presents a do llar value quantification of the level of reliability inherent in a gi ven system improvement option. Based on this quantification, the impro vement option that best balance the improvement cost and the increment al reliability is selected. Reliability indices including the expected unserved energy (EUE) were computed for each improvement option. Usin g the EUE, the value of service un-reliability to the customers was co mputed for each option. Dollar value based analysis is then performed to balance cost and reliability quantitatively. A selection process th at a utility engineer or system planner may go through to arrive at th e option that best balance the cost and reliability of system improvem ent is covered in the paper.