This is a significant work in an important area, and one that is receiving growing attention. It has been estimated that many professional meetings currently devote a third or more of their time to questions of power-system reliability. The book digests this research and covers the standard techniques and methods that are currently standard. The presentation employs a minimum of mathematics.

The five chapters of this book collect and illustrate techniques that have been applied to the prediction of reliability and availability of the various specific segments of an electric power system. The text emphasizes the numerical procedures employed in making these reliability and availability predictions. Other related criteria that have been put forward in the literature, such as adequacy, dependability, and security, are also introduced and defined as needed and as applied in specific contexts.

The book opens with a discussion of reliability and availability applications to transmission and distribution systems, treating independent component outages and their effects on the continuity of supply. It then takes up models for generation planning and proceeds to the area of bulk power supply system reliability evaluation, offering methods for prediction of composite reliability of the generation and transmission systems. A final chapter extends the study into operating reliability assessments concerned with reserve problems: It considers the adequacy of the generating system to meet forecasted loads a short period ahead.

The book is the sixth in the Modern Electrical Technology series, edited by Alexander Kusko.

Professor Billinton is in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Saskatchewan.

Roy Billinton's profile page

Dr. Ringlee is with Power Technologies Inc.

Robert Ringlee's profile page

Dr. Wood is with Power Technologies Inc.

Allen J. Wood's profile page