Expert System for an Optimized Asset Management in Electric Power Transmission Systems

Poor asset-management practices can be considered one of the primary sources of high financial costs of electric power companies. Mostly defined as an optimization problem, asset management programs aim to guide the use of the physical assets of a company, mainly by optimizing their life cycle. Operation and maintenance policies are established for each equipment, from its acquisition, until the most appropriate time for its replacement. Therefore, it becomes strategic to use decision-making processes to reduce the global costs of an active asset and to extend its life time maximally. Based on these assumptions, we propose a method, which is instantiated by computer software, to assist asset-management decision making in the electric power companies.