Assessment of Secondary Feeders Reliability in Nigeria: A case of Ado-Ekiti Metropolis Distribution Network

Abstract

The major goal of power system is to ensure continuous supply of electricity at declared service quality to meet up with the demand of its customers. However, interruptions which sometimes may be unavoidable, tends to negate this trend. Identifying the problems will indeed enable the power utility companies to take the necessary steps in improving the reliability of the system. This paper used load point and customer-oriented reliability indices to evaluate the performance of the four distribution feeders within Ado-Ekiti metropolis, Nigeria, in order to identify the major causes of the frequent power supply outages and also suggested ways of improving its performance. Relevant outage data were collected from the supply utility-Benin Electricity Distribution Company of Nigeria (BEDC) daily operational logbooks from January 2021 to December 2021. Some of the data gathered were outage frequencies, fault durations, causes of outages, age of distribution transformers and number of customers on each of the feeders. Quantitative method of reliability indices was used to estimate and compare the performance of the feeders. The average availability (%) for the investigated period is 86.23%, 92.68%, 90.18% and 91.25% for Ajilosun, Basiri, Okesa and Adebayo feeders respectively. The results showed that almost all the feeders are not reliable. The study will enable the utility company in making informed decisions that will improve the reliability of the feeders and thereby facilitating effective monitoring to enhance optimum performance.