A Study on the Reliability of the Distribution Automation System for the Lightning Effect

In today's competitive power market, electric power utilities have strived to provide energy at an acceptable level of quality due to increased expectations from customers. For this reason, electric power utilities have invested in electric equipment and new techniques. That is the Distribution Automation System (DAS). A merit of DAS is the ability to reduce outage time because of fast service restoration. However, DAS is usually installed in outdoor environments. Therefore, their efficiency is affected by the external conditions. Lightning creates varying degrees of physical stress on DAS. This paper focuses on the reliability of DAS for lightning. Four application studies were performed to compare the reliability indices.