INNOVATION FOR SECURE AND

EFFICIENT TRANSMISSION GRIDS

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CIGR Belgium Conference

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Brussels, Belgium | March 12 - 14, 2014

Risk Based Maintenance and Lifetime Management of Overhead Lines

N. Pinho da Silvaa, J. Casacab, F. Azevedoc,a, J. Gomes-Motaa, L. Campos-Pintob
a
Albatroz Engineering
b
REN Rede Elctrica Nacional
c
CENTRIA FCT Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Portugal

SUMMARY
The Portuguese transmission system operator launched a long term enterprise for developing
a risk based methodology to optimise Overhead Line lifetime and maintenance costs, based
on asset information, inspection, maintenance and third party data [1]. The methodology must
provide next-day and next-year risk estimates for operation and maintenance, respectively.
The authors propose combining heterogeneous information into a probabilistic model that
may be used to find maintenance policies optimizing the trade-off between cost reduction and
higher quality of service. It leverages field data from helicopter inspections, dispatch event
records and third party data. Such approach is most suitable for Overhead Liness risk
analysis and estimation, since Overhead Lines spread across heterogeneous territories and are
subject to diverse environmental factors.
The procedure considers the interaction between each Overhead Line and its space-time
context, thus departing from the more traditional single component view towards a system
analysis. To cope with the heterogeneity covered by transmission Overhead Lines, the
models spatial resolution is data driven according to how data is geographically framed,
while the time unit may range from seconds to years, thus satisfying the diverse time-scope
requirements of the undergoing work promoted by REN, the Portuguese transmission system
operator.
The methodology is generic enough to be applied to different contingencies. The paper
presents the risk based approach pursued by the Portuguese transmission system operator to
reduce maintenance cost while increase equipment availability, and shows an example of
application considering the reliability of eighteen Overhead Lines due to wild fires, fog, and
obstacles collisions, like trees.
KEYWORDS
Risk-Based Maintenance and Operation, Reliability, Overhead Lines [OHL], Airborne Inspections.

npsilva@albatroz-eng.com

Introduction
In the current context of the operation and maintenance management of overhead lines of the
Portuguese Transmission Grid [RNT], most infrastructure managers, on an international scale, have
shared the same concerns and trends in terms of improving environmental integration, efficiency and
risk management. Maintenance has become increasingly important over the years and is today
regarded as one of the foundations for sustained improvement of quality of service [QOS]. Overhead
lines [OHL] demand for special attention given its geographical dispersion, subject to adverse natural
phenomena and need harmonious coexistence with the natural and human ecosystems that they cross.
The RNT has a high quality record for reliability already, therefore it is imperative to learn the
maximum from each issue. In the past, the OHLs inspections in the Portuguese transmission grid
were carried out visually from vehicles on the ground. However, this method entailed very high costs
and did not provide an appropriate degree of accuracy, forcing the frequent operation of protection
systems. Furthermore, it did not provided any preventive warnings to forecast or schedule of
maintenance work since there were not systems that would allow this issue, which led to a large
dispersion of maintenance human resources by territory. Since 2005, the Portuguese TSO has been
developing an important work in terms of overhead lines inspection regarding to the measurement of
the distance from the line to the trees and other obstacles (i.e., clearance measures), with integrated
laser technology in aerial inspections. In 2007, the routine of overhead lines using thermography,
video recording and measuring distances inspection (through LiDAR) was established. By measuring
distances by laser, a routine of selective cutting and trimming, focusing only on the identified critical
areas, was introduced. With the experience acquired, the clearance tolerances were adjusted and,
despite the inherent complexity of their integration, the new inspection methodologies quickly
demonstrated their technical and economic benefits.
From the progress already achieved, such as the criticality indexes based on field evidence and
expert knowledge [3] and the unified risk index defined by heuristics based on information from
airborne inspections [4], and with the pressure dictated by the budgetary enforcement, came the idea
of changing the paradigm of the inspection activity and optimization of OHLs from a Time Based
(TBM) and Condition Based (CBM) approach towards an approach to risk and impact on the grid
(Risk Based RBM) materialized in a maintenance management tool for OHLs supported by a model
of probability of occurrence and correlation between variables and measure the impact of incidents
[1,2]. Rather than what is common practice in the industry, i.e., the continued implementation of
inspection and monitoring of overhead lines, for certain time periods or by identification of
disturbances in the physical condition of their equipment, a mathematical model for calculating the
risk of incidents was produced. This model is based on the specification of a map of probability of
occurrence, taking into account a set of real world scenarios that affects performance and physical
condition of OHLs. However, the scenarios concerned with, and in particular, lightning, fires,
pollution and storks, show significant variability through time, so their understanding in terms of
predicting the occurrence is a complex one. In the last five years, these four main contingencies
represent about 79% of the faults in the RNT (Figure 1).
Beyond these four main causes of incidents, there is a fifth, the vegetation/obstacles, which
despite having no expression with regard to the incidents recorded in recent years, is extremely
important in the behavior of the grid and quality of service [6].
The system developed obtains a risk index for each circuit line, per month and time of day,
where the resulting risk index is the probability of incidents, considering the causes described above,
multiplied by the impact (severity) that these potential incidents may cause in the transmission grid.
Here, the reader finds detailed explanations of the method, concerning the fog/pollution, fires and
vegetation/obstacles contingencies, which includes the data-driven design of the hazard rate of each
contingency and a study of risk-based maintenance applied to eighteen OHLs of the Portuguese
transmission grid.

Risk-Based Maintenance and Lifetime Management of OHL

The maintenance activity in REN- Rede Elctrica Nacional, SA is based on the adoption of
policies and strategies that suit the required business performance of the company. The present
business environment has, of course, impact on OPEX costs as a key component in managing the asset

5%

9%

16%

26%

2%

42%
Forest Fires

Storks

Lightning

Fog/Pollution

Unknown causes

Other causes

Figure 1. Distribution of the RNTs incidents over contingencies in the last five years.

life cycle, and therefore, is reviewing its policies and maintenance strategies in order to potentiate the
business strategies based on asset risk (Risk-Based Maintenance). Based on indexes of criticality it is
possible for the company to optimize maintenance activity, especially in prioritizing periodic
inspections and replacement of equipment, as well as an appropriate use of resources (technical and
financial). The chart in Figure 2 gives an idea, in a relative way, the distribution of each type of
maintenance currently performed in REN, based on costs inherent in each type, for OHL. Represented
in green color is the present status. Are also shown (dashed) the relative values expected in a near
future (2-3 years), reflecting a progressive increase in strategies based on risk and condition, rather
than based on time.
In this regard, motivated by the introduction of an overall improvement in the quality of
electricity transmission and safety conditions of the power grid, in the medium and long term, new
optimization methods of monitoring and maintenance of future grids will be equated, allowing a more
reliable and efficient knowledge and monitoring of the RNT, thus contributing to a lower probability
of incidents and interruptions in the grid, especially in overhead lines and most critical sections. Thus,
a risk analysis model was carried, which on one hand, support the engineers of the control and
operation centers, in their everyday decision-making in the management of the RNT, and on the other,
serves the better management of inspection and maintenance actions based, in both cases, on the risk
identified for each point of the grid. The approach of this method will enable the following features:
Render the data and classes of technical information on the assets of RNT(overhead lines) on
projections of economic value and remaining lifetime of each asset;
Generate maintenance routines that lead to a desired state or dually, to achieve the best state of
the assets for a given level of maintenance resources;
Create a platform for test & simulation scenarios that allow optimization and support decisionmaking related to the control and operation of the grid, taking into account the operating
conditions that they are exposed.
The risk index, of a line L, for a given month and time of day will be given by:
(1)

where prob(m,p) is the fault probability of the line L in the month m and time of the day p, and
severity(m,p) is the severity (cost / consequences) of a fault in this line during this period. To retrieve
the data on an annual basis, an average of the periods of the day and month will be computed.
To determine the risk its necessary to determine the probability of an event, as well as the
resulting severity of the resulting network for this event. The values of fault severity of an OHL are
generated from 'savecases' of RNT in the period under review. The developed method is based on
algorithms of calculations of energy flows (Newton-Raphson iterative method) determining the
impacts that a fortuitous circuit lost originates in the technical quality of service [7]. The severity
should reflect the consequences of contingency (fault) including the conditions of load from the grid

Figure 2. The distribution of each type of maintenance currently performed at REN. Dashed circumferences show
predicted weight of each strategy within 2-3 years.

elements, voltages in each bus against its operating limits, the possibility of load loss, loss of
generation, the creation of electrical islands (stable or not), evaluation of voltage stability (situations of
voltage collapse) and evaluation of cascading triggers.
The reliability of a grid (or a subset of a grid) depends on the failure of equipment or from
external causes, all grouped under the environment umbrella. The estimation of the overall grid
reliability from the individual equipment and environment follows a three stage approach. On the first
stage, observation of qualitative phenomena or measurements of quantitative phenomena are
expressed as variables or descriptors of equipment or environment status. These are obtained from
asset information, third party data, inspections or experts. In the second stage, the available variables
or descriptors are considered inputs to specialised functions that express probability of failure for the
equipment or probability of hazard for the environment. It is expected that more than one candidate
function can be established for each variables and that sophisticated functions can combine more than
one variable or descriptor. Energy demands at each sink and limits on production at each source,
combined with power flow limits at each circuit and transformer set constraints for an energy routing
problem. The solution to each of such problems is a save case and an associated overall probability
of failure can be estimated per cause (or variable). In the future, more sophisticated models will yield
grid probability of failures considering all causes on equipment and environment.
In this paper, models for vegetation/obstacles, fog and forest fires, all as independent
variables/descriptors are presented. Apparently, they are all environment related which is true for the
Portuguese Transmission Grid that sports a very high reliability index on their assets - however, due to
data availability limitations, pollution is estimated from asset management data instead of third party
environmental data. Other data that deserve attention and shall be considered in future work include:
asset ageing; visual/video, thermography /infra-red and corona/ultra-violet inspections; the effect of
maintenance actions; agriculture and land use; weather data such as temperature, humidity, wind
direction and speed; human activities; wildlife, pedology; edaphology and vegetation growth.

Probabilistic Models
Building upon the Poisson model, the framework assumes independence between different
contingencies. The Poisson model is widely used in reliability analysis and quantitative risk based
approaches. The reliability function is given by the models survivor function and the differentiating
feature among methods is the design of the hazard rate and, consequently, the parameterization of the
Poissons expected value.

(a)
(b)
Figure 3. Heat map of a set of municipalities showing their -factor (a) concerning with the Fire contingency
(Equation 3); and (b) regarding the Fog contingency (Equation 4). The colouring follows a normalized intensity
scale, depicted from blue (less dangerous) the brown (more dangerous), with white representing zero values.

Let
be the random variable representing the number of outages on circuit L due to
contingency c. For the Fire and Fog contingencies, its expected number of faults in a year is

given by:
(2)
which, in the short period, is a surrogate for the outages probability. Here,

(m,p) is the
average fault rate (per 6 hours period, per km) to consider for line OHL, in month m, day period p (06h, 6-12h, 12-18h, or 18-24h) due to cause. This rate discriminates exploration voltage through a
convex combination of own (Ls) faults and faults of all lines of the same voltage level; L,c (m,p)
ranges from 0 to 1. If appropriate for the given contingency c, it is computed and aggregated by
municipalities (Portuguese administrative regions, with 320km2 average size); duration(m,p) is the
number of periods of type p in month m, which is to say its (average) number of days, duration(m).
The proposed methodology employs a data driven design of the contingencys hazard rate that
accounts for its data resolution with respect to the technical element, i.e. the whole OHL or a circuits
span. For example, the design for the Fire and Fog contingencies considers a hazard rate with the
circuit as the spatial unit, while the obstacles, vegetation or building, contingency shows a case where
the circuits physical span is the spatial reference.
L,c

Forest Fires
The model of forest fires uses institutional data from the Portuguese Institute of Ocean and
Atmosphere (IPMA, Forest Fire Weather Index [FWI], in each municipality, for each day of the year,
between 1 and 5) and the Centre for Coordination of Civil Protection (online statement of active fires).
Additionally, RENs maintenance data consisting of the area intervened due to the fuel management
program1 are also considered. In this case, the parameter naturally depends on the considered month
by taking the average FWI of the past 4 years in such month in the municipality (discarding zeros).
Hence, for a municipality mun, is calculated in the following way:
,

(3)

where
is an exponential function of the 4-year moving average of the FWI, obtained by
performing a nonlinear regression on estimated values based on historical relations of incidents with
their FWI of the day, and
is a positive and decreasing linear function of the area
intervened due to the fuel management program. This coefficient is aggregated over the municipalities
crossed by circuit L to retrieve the
in Equation (2). Figure 3(a) shows a set of
municipalities with its respective
.
1

Forest Defense Law In 2007 a new legislation took effect, which ensures that OHL corridors act as way out
routes for biomass and as open corridors to slow the progress of fire during wildfires. The procedures require
that a corridor is kept clear at all times.

(a)

(b)
Figure 4. The red line represents 400 kV OHL with its towers depicted as purple circles. (a) Shows geo-referenced
LiDAR clearance measures of obstacles within the OHL easement. The triangular points represent obstacles
(vegetation or building) with clearance below 14 meters. (b) Depicts an example of soil occupation mapping: the
original data, from the Portuguese Geographic Institute, contains the polygons and the description of soil
occupation, which is processed to retrieve quantitative indicators of danger to the OHL. The colouring follows a
normalized intensity scale of threat to the OHL, from blue (less dangerous) to red (more dangerous), with white
representing zero values (e.g, in (b) eucalyptus dominate the vegetation in the red areas).

Fog
The model takes into account the fact that the line is located (or not) at a propitious geographical area
to this sort of incident, as well as the types of insulators installed in the same line. In this case, factor
is constant over month and day period and, for each municipality mun, it is computed as:

(4)
where
is a positive and decreasing linear function of
, the
percentage of towers of OHL L that have composite insulators within municipality mun, and
is an indicator function of whether mun is, or not, prone to this sort of incidents. This
coefficient is aggregated over the municipalities crossed by circuit L to retrieve the
in
Equation (2). Figure 3(b) shows a set of municipalities with their respective
.
Pollution verification relies on maintenance data, namely insulators washing. Thus mun is
considered polluted ifthere are historical records of such washing there (washing data are recent in
REN). It is also intended to consider mun polluted when there is a registered fault due to Fog and
Pollution in the last year there. However, that requires precise fault location. Some locations are
available thanks to inspection and maintenance data, as well as from oscillographic data on faults. An
effort is now being taken to locate faults as much as possible.

Vegetation/Obstacles
There are two fundamental indexes obtained from airborne inspections [5]: the clearance index
(Figure 4Figure 4(a)), which characterizes short term threats to the OHL, and the vegetation growth
index,
which, to some extent, allows predicting long term threats to the OHL, and may also include third
party data, such as the easements soil occupation map [6] (Figure 4 (b)). Furthermore, the LiDAR
information also allows characterizing the type of span (urban, mixed or rural), as well as the density
of vegetation, or buildings, in the span. To characterize the spans hazard rate, the method exploits the
canonical link of the Poisson model with the previous indexes as explanatory variables, i.e.

(5)

where is the spans time of exposure in years,

is the operation voltage level,
is the
vegetation (building) spans density,
is the clearance vegetation (building) index and
is the

Forest Fires
LZR.FR(150kV)
LOQ.TN(150kV)

LPN.CF2(220kV)
LTG.CN-EJ(220kV)

LPG.RM(400kV)
LPM.SN2(400kV)

Fog
LPA.QGD2(150kV)
LPM.FF2(150kV)

LCG.RM2(220kV)
LFN.AM3(220kV)

LFN.AM4 (400kV)
LPM.RJ(400kV)

Vegetation/Obstacles

Figure 5. On the left, geographical location of the six circuits representing the forest fires (above) and fog
(middle) and vegetation/building (below) models. On the right is shown the comparison between the two circuits, on
each voltage level, predicted by the model (larger blue bar) and their real performance through the number of
faults, caused by fire (above) and fog (middle) and vegetation/obstacles (below) registered in the last twelve years
(thinner bar).

vegetation growth rate index. The approach leverages the canonical link function to compute the
maximum likelihood model. After computing the yearly hazard rate due to the obstacles contingency
from Equation ( 5 ), it may be written in the nomenclature of Equation (2), defined by month m and
day period p, via
Obstacles

Obstacles

(6)

where
is a positive increasing linear function of
, the rate of outages in
span s observed in month m and day period p. Interpreting an OHL as a serial network of electric
spans the intensity with respect to an OHL L is given by
Obstacles
Obtacles .

Application
The results in Figure 5 were obtained by applying the probabilistic methods of Section 3 to eighteen
circuits of the RNT, six for each studied contingency: forest fires, pollution associated with fog and
vegetation/buildings. At this point the severity of all the elements of the grid is only processed

for a month and the results being evaluated. Thus, the final results are still restricted to the
plan of the reliability.
The results are consistent with the performance observed in the field, however, regarding the
vegetation contingency, on the one hand, there are very few observed incidents, consequence of
RENs right-of-way (ROW) maintenance since 2007 and, on the other hand, index quantization tends
to overestimate field performance, particularly on the 400 kV OHLs, and needs to be addressed in the
future. Nevertheless, with these estimates it is already possible to define three areas of intervention (A,
B and C), with different intervals. A most interesting application relates to inspections: When
inspection cost is considerable, it is reasonable to inspect less frequently during the time the item is in
healthier states, and, more frequently as time passes and/or the item degrades, namely, a conditionbased inspection scheme. Soon, with the introduction of severity data it will be possible to further
optimize the cost / performance ratio, investing in a risk-based inspection model.
Conclusion
This paper presented the Portuguese TSO risk-based maintenance methodology, with applications to
the fog/pollution, forest fires and vegetation/obstacles contingencies. The presentation included datadriven design of the hazard rate of each contingency and a study of risk-based maintenance applied to
eighteen OHLs of the Portuguese transmission grid.
Despite the reliability of the models and its validation with field teams, the usefulness of the
risk model depends, however, on continuously updated and consistent data. It also relies on the
database system capability to ever better describe the grids reality, thus requiring a permanent
adjustment, and depending on the progressive knowledge obtained on the ground.
The effort will continue towards a sustainable practice of risk-based maintenance and
inspections, which improves equipment availability while reducing the maintenance costs.

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[6]

[7]

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