ASYMPTOTIC AVAILABILITY OF AN ELECTRICAL SUBSTATION VIA A SEMI-MARKOV PROCESS COMPUTED BY GENERALIZED APPROXIMATE INVERSE PRECONDITIONING

The rapid increase of power consumption has become more intense nowadays due to the continuous economical and population growth. Consequently the demand for uninterrupted power supply or the minimization of the down time of such systems inevitably results into developing highly reliable and available energy plants. The reduction of the down time of the power plants can be achieved by scheduled maintenance activities and including stand-by components which will be activated to replace the corresponding component in a case of failure during its repair. In power plants the maintenance is performed to the stand-by components, hence in a case of malfunction of the main components, an extensive down time period is observed due to the unavailability of the reserved units. The power supply will be restored only after the repair of the damaged component or the completion of the maintenance procedure. Consequently, the starting time of the preventive maintenance and its duration might have a great affect on the uninterrupted energy supply. In this paper the behavior of an electric substation which is equipped with two powe