Risk-based Distribution System Asses Management

RISK DSAM was a five year competence building project at SINTEF Energy Research, sponsored by the Norwegian Research Council in the RENERGI programme, 9 network companies in Norway and France and ELFORSK Sweden. The project started in January 2006 and ran over a 5 years period.

The project provides relevant background for the implementation of risk based asset management in distribution companies.

Asset management is a relatively new concept for electricity distribution companies in Norway and elsewhere. The concept is gaining momentum as a way to cope with the challenges distribution companies are facing in managing relatively aging infrastructures under increasing requirements from stakeholders - owners, authorities, regulators, customers.

However, the implementation of an asset management system imposes significant changes in how distribution companies are managed and in particular the way to address the risks their networks and businesses are exposed to.

The project has addressed this issue through:

  • Identifying the challenges distribution companies are facing
  • Providing basic definitions of concepts and facilitating understanding of what risk based asset management is for a distribution business
  • Providing guidelines for the selection of risk indicators, asset categorization and for designing risk based asset maintenance and reinvestment strategies.
  • Investigating and proposing methods that can be used for risk based asset management, with focus on maintenance and reinvestment decision making. The methods explored include: qualitative risk analyses (coarse risk analyses, risk matrices), quantitative risk analyses (Bayesian Networks, Bow-Tie models) and multi-criteria decision support under uncertainty.

Contact: Dag Eirik Nordgård , SINTEF Energy Research