Reliability assessment by coordinating maintenance vehicles in electric power distribution systems

Considering that energy supply and the restoration procedures in contingency scenarios is a relevant and permanent concern when operating electric distribution systems, electric utilities look for improving business process related to managing human and materials resources in order to have an effective operation in the sense of reliability indexes without increasing operational costs. This challenge is particularly important in emergent markets by economical aspects and also by new policies from the regulators taking place in Brazil nowadays. This work proposes a mathematical model to schedule maintenance vehicles when considering emergency scenarios in electric distribution systems, from their corresponding GPS information to assign the most appropriate set of pending emergency orders previously defined. They must be assigned to the most appropriate set of pending emergency orders previously defined. The efficiency was evaluated in an actual scenario of a Brazilian utility. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Scientific Committee.