System Reliability for Line Design

For electric utilities, the only aspect of design and engineering more important than reliability is safety. Safety is of utmost importance and, for this reason, all four levels of the Line Design and Staking program have a heavy emphasis on safety. In this advanced course, students who have successfully completed the PLDS program will have the opportunity to expand their knowledge of line design to include standards, calculations and practices that enable designers to produce lines that are safe and reliable. Students will learn how reliability indices work and can be improved through appropriate route selection, pole and hardware choices, customer engagement, line access, visibility, phase configuration, recloser and fuse placement and documentation. Exercises in outage scenarios will demonstrate how all of these aspects of line design and staking can contribute to reliability, as well as, ease and speed of restoration. The certification test for this course will be given online the week following in-class instruction.