System-Wide Reliability Forecast Model

Client: CEATI International & Utility Working Group

Year of Completion: 2018

Utilities are becoming increasing challenged by state & provincial regulators to share the outcomes of their capital & maintenance investment strategies. Recognizing that there was no easy way for utilities to share their reliability-based outcomes from their investments, and that the qualitative evidence currently produced could be easily challenged during the regulatory proceedings, CEATI wanted to develop reliability forecast model that could provide data-driven, objective and easy-to-understand reliability outcomes for capital & maintenance investments.

The CEATI System-Wide Reliability Forecast Model (T164700 #50/133) initiative is designed to provide direction in the form of best practices and industry standards to utilities on establishing their own reliability forecasting procedures, leveraging their associated asset and investment data. This included both a guide as well a tool that utilities could leverage in order to generate their own 10-year reliability forecasts using their own input data.

This initiative provided utilities both with guidance on how to establish their own reliability forecasting procedures while also providing a tool allowing utilities to immediately begin leveraging their available input data to produce reliability forecasts associated with major capital & maintenance investments. Through this approach, utilities can explore various investment scenarios to determine the optimal “mix” of investments will that deliver the desired reliability outcomes at a cost-effective price point. As an example, through this approach, a utility can reduce their capital spending by up to 25% by executing a mix of asset renewal and distribution automation (DA) investments, as opposed to just executing asset renewal activities exclusively.