Life Expectancy Evaluation of the Wood Poles Which Support the Hellenic Electrical Distribution Network
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 23, Issue 5
Abstract
The Hellenic electrical distribution lines have been basically supported with the use of wood poles. Outages due to aging, degradation, or broken wood poles may infer significant costs due to repair and loss of energy to consumers. Lifetime estimation of wood poles is significant for maintenance and replacement decisions at the power utility. The paper presents a methodology, based on a statistical analysis, for the evaluation of the life expectancy and the production of a survival curve of a typical Hellenic distribution wood pole in-service. The proposed methodology intends to minimize the life-cycle cost of inspection and refurbishment of wood poles in the distribution network of Hellas, something that is really important in the new competitive and liberating Hellenic electrical energy market.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writers want to express their gratitude to the Hellenic Public Power Corporation S.A. for the kind supply of various technical data.
References
Bhuyan, G. S. (1998). “Condition based serviceability and reliability assessment of wood pole structures.” Proc., 8th Int. Conf. on transmission and distribution construction and line-line maintenance, IEEE, New York, 333–339.
Datla, S. V., and Pandey, M. D. (2006). “Estimation of life expectancy of wood poles in electrical distribution networks.” Struct. Safety, 28, 304–319.
Elandt-Johnson, R. C., and Johnson, N. L. (2002). Survival models and data analysis, Wiley, New York.
Evans, M., Hasting, N., and Peacock, B. (2000). Statistical distributions, 3rd Ed., Wiley, New York.
Gustavsen, B., and Rolsfeng, L. (2000). “Simulation of wood pole replacement rate and its application to life cycle economy studies.” IEEE Trans. Power Deliv., 15(1), 300–306.
Gustavsen, B., Rolfseng, L., Andersen, O., Christensen, H., Falch, B., Jankila, K. A., Myhr, T., Sandvik, H., and Thomassen, H. (2002). “Simulation of wood-pole replacement rate: Application to distribution overhead lines.” IEEE Trans. Power Deliv., 17(4), 1050–1056.
Gustavsen, B., and Rolsfeng, L. (2005). “Asset management of wood pole utility structures.” Int. J. Electr. Power Energy Syst., 27, 641–646.
Hines, W. W., and Montgomery, D. C. (1990). Probability and statistics in engineering and management science, 3rd Ed., Wiley, New York.
Lawless, J. F. (2003). Statistical models and methods for lifetime data, Wiley, New York.
North America Wood Pole Council. (2005). “The wood pole 2005: Design considerations, service benefits and economic reward.” Technical Bulletin (prepared by Hi-Line Engineering, LLC, Lovelace, W. R.), ⟨http://www.woodpoles.org/documents/TheWoodPole2005techbulletin8-05_000.pdf⟩ (Apr. 9, 2008).
PPC S.A. (2007). Transmission lines characteristics, Hellenic Public Power Corporation S.A., Athens, Greece.
Refsnaes, S., Rolfseng, L., Solvang, E., and Heggset, J. (2006). “Timing of wood pole replacement based on lifetime estimation.” Proc., 9th Int. Conf. on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden.
Tableman, M., and Kim, J. S. (2004). Survival analysis using s-analysis of time-to-event data, Chapman & Hall/CRC, Fla.
Wang, C., Leicester, R. H., and Nguyen, M. (2008). “Probabilistic procedure for design of untreated timber poles in-ground under attack of decay fungi.” Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf., 93, 476–481.
Wolfe, R. W., and Kluge, R. O. (2005). “Designated fiber stress for wood poles.” U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, General Technical Report FPL-GTR-158, ⟨http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fpl_gtr158.pdf⟩ (Apr. 11, 2008).
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 23 • Issue 5 • October 2009
Pages: 314 - 319
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 13, 2008
Accepted: Mar 30, 2009
Published online: Apr 1, 2009
Published in print: Oct 2009
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.