IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2014 - 108

Analysis results appear either in the form of region reports or
activity constraints or as the regulation and control of network
equipment to optimize network conditions.
only on economic indicators and their planning schemes take
customer benefits into account. economic indicators, which
are the common thread in the benefits for all distribution
system stakeholders and are of crucial importance to asset
owners, are the main metrics for regulation. These indicators
are divided into two categories, expense indicators and loss
indicators, so as to help set targets for asset owner plans.

Distribution System Operation
(Short-Term Asset Management)
This is called dispatching in distribution companies. Distribution network operation should be conducted in such a
way that planned targets for asset management are realized
in the short term. To this end, all distribution processes must
be operated by the dispatching section. figure 7 shows the
role of dispatching in asset management for the realization
of stakeholder rights.
as shown in figure 7, the main role of dispatching is data
monitoring, data analysis, and automation. it is noteworthy
that automation means provision of automatic reports on
activities. each distribution process can be divided into the
three dispatching sections shown in figure 7. This classification requires analyzing distribution processes in the data flow
space and recognizing the projects that improve such processes. a dispatching operational matrix can thus be drawn,
as in figure 8. This matrix determines the databases required
for each distribution process. These databases play a crucial
role in the data flow of asset management. as shown in figure 8, some databases are common to several processes. The
accumulation of data-monitoring sequences in the dispatching
operational matrix provides a comprehensive framework for
different types of data flows in the asset management system.
some of these data belong to the internal dispatching database, and the remaining data belong to the databases of various
distribution centers, i.e., the external dispatching databases.
figure 9 shows all the data flowing in the short-term asset
management system, separated into internal and external dispatching databases. as one can see in figure 9, the data of the
short-term asset management system are not the only variable
in the network condition space (there are also voltage, flow,
and active and reactive energy, for example), and other data
such as network structure, equipment regulation, and management plans are also considered. all the data shown in figure 9
require measurement and monitoring, estimation, forecasting,
and accumulation in the form of databases.

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as one can see in the second row of the operational
matrix shown in figure 8, the analysis of data stored in
databases results in the key asset management indicators,
and the process of revision projects is determined by studying them. These are shown in figure 10 as a comprehensive
model composed of different analyses required for asset
management, the method of calculating asset management indicators, and the selection of revision projects. as
can be seen in figure 10, all indicators of the framework
described earlier are considered. The most important asset
management analysis can be summarized as reliability,
load flow, demand-side management, final price, environment, and an outage-scheduling plan. analysis results used
to determine indicators are defined as system optimization
projects, which can be executed automatically or manually.
This layer is displayed at the end of figure 10. in addition,
the short-term improvement of asset management indicators is only feasible through the determination of productive targets, regulation of lateral equipment, execution of
emergency services, specification of dispersed generation, targeted switching, capacitor regulation, on-time use
of responsive loads, and regulation of the retail market.
analysis results appear either in the form of region reports
or activity constraints or as the regulation and control of
network equipment to optimize network conditions. The
second form must be automated using long-term targets.
according to figures 8 and 10, equipment that can be
automated includes switches, dispersed generators, filters,
capacitors, and protection equipment.

Conclusion
asset management is the most important section of distribution system management. implementation of the asset management concept needs the comprehensive framework that
concluded from distribution goals analysis. This article presented a comprehensive framework that can be used for all
decisions in distribution system management, such as planning, operating, supervision, etc.

Biographies
Reza Dashti is with the iran University of science and Technology, iran.
Saeed Afsharnia is with the University of Tehran, iran.
p&e

may/june 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2014