Electrical Grid - Aging Infrastructure

Aging Infrastructure

Despite the novel institutional arrangements and network designs of the electrical grid, its power delivery infrastructures suffer aging across the developed world. Four contributing factors to the current state of the electric grid and its consequences include:

1. Aging power equipment – older equipment have higher failure rates, leading to customer interruption rates affecting the economy and society; also, older assets and facilities lead to higher inspection maintenance costs and further repair/restoration costs.
2. Obsolete system layout – older areas require serious additional substation sites and rights-of-way that cannot be obtained in current area and are forced to use existing, insufficient facilities.
3. Outdated engineering – traditional tools for power delivery planning and engineering are ineffective in addressing current problems of aged equipment, obsolete system layouts, and modern deregulated loading levels
4. Old cultural value – planning, engineering, operating of system using concepts and procedures that worked in vertically integrated industry exacerbate the problem under a deregulated industry