Risk-Based Approach to Maintenance Management Applied on Power Transformers

The power network utility sector is facing immense changes in their operation and management activities due to the deregulation of the market structure. Therefore, asset management (AM) is seen as an essential method to ensure control, gain knowledge and improve decision-making while these changes occur. Risk management is seen as a mainstream regime to enable AM to fulfil the mentioned drivers, because risk provides an analytical dimension with the characteristics of being comparable, measurable and manageable. Maintenance management is an essential part within AM, as it forms the means to track and ensure measurable asset performance throughout the asset lifecycle. In this contribution, we introduce risk incorporated Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) method based on the overall corporate risk management principles. In the developed method, the traditional Risk Priority Number (RPN) approach used in RCM studies has been expanded in order to deal with the consequences of asset failure modes on multiple corporate business values.