Lifetime Availability Analysis of High Voltage Circuit Breakers for Maintenance Optimization

Different maintenance methods are used in industry. The classic preventive planned one is mainly replaced by the preventive opportune type. The second is based on state condition monitoring of different power systems components. Unfortunately it is expensive and only in few cases are technically and economically justified. This paper present a technique to evaluate the maintenance policy efficiency and, finally to rank the subsytems of high voltage circuit-breakers aiming to select what subsystem can be selected for state monitoring. A large database for 12 circuit-breakers was used and the information about failures and maintenance during 33 years was used for analysis.