Full Text Available

Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.

Development of regional reliability hurdle rate for South Africa

The reform of the electricity distribution industry has resulted in the national regulator authorities moving from Rate of Return (ROR) to Incentive Based Regulation (IBR) quality regulation mechanism. This has influenced the reporting, planning, design, operating and maintenance (O&M) philosophy su...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Van Harte, MA
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Electrical Engineering 2014
Subjects:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1867613181504913408
access_status_str Open Access
author Van Harte, MA
author_browse Van Harte, MA
author_facet Van Harte, MA
author_sort Van Harte, MA
collection Thesis
description The reform of the electricity distribution industry has resulted in the national regulator authorities moving from Rate of Return (ROR) to Incentive Based Regulation (IBR) quality regulation mechanism. This has influenced the reporting, planning, design, operating and maintenance (O&M) philosophy surrounding distribution networks and service delivery to the end customer. The introduction of IBR regulation has created a need to understand how the IBR scheme implemented will influence the capital and operating investment decisions. The aim of the work leading up to this thesis has been to develop reliability hurdle rates that include the effect of the IBR scheme implemented by the national regulator authority of South Africa. This will enable the network planner to compare the investment decision with the reward / penalty scheme. The thesis addresses the challenges facing distribution network planning to achieve the appropriate (optimal) balance of investment cost vs. reliability levels. Value Based Reliability Planning (VBRP) methodology is an approach to evaluate capital investment decisions by quantifying, in economic terms, the benefits of improving reliability (System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) per capital cost required) by comparing different reliability improvement alternatives. This is achieved by relating the investment decision to the reward / penalty scheme introduced by National Electricity Regulator for South Africa (NERSA). To reach this goal this thesis derived a reliability hurdle rate by utilising benefit-to-cost analysis principles by considering the shape of the reward / penalty scheme. Furthermore, this necessitates the determination of the optimal balance between investment decisions to obtain improvement in the continuity of supply indices. One of the fundamental objectives is therefore to relate the IBR and VBRP in an efficient and effective way, that is the aim of the national regulator authority. A new method to determine a regional and national reliability hurdle rate is proposed by the thesis. This is a first step in obtaining an optimal expansion alternative and allows the planner to compare the preferred alternative selected against a hurdle rate. Since the method considers the reward / penalty scheme, the thesis first reviews the principles that influence the quality regulation mechanisms and the benefit-to-cost analysis techniques. The second step demonstrates the derivation of the reliability hurdle rate utilising the reward / penalty scheme adopted within South Africa. Parameters considered include the number of customers and the interruption indices in each region. The application studies demonstrate the derivation of the regional reliability hurdle rate from the six regions within South Africa. This allows the derivation of regional reliability hurdle rate from the different regional reward / penalty schemes. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to understand the influence of different parameters, which will influence the regional reliability hurdle rate. The results from the case studies show that, when NERSA creates the reward / penalty scheme, it is crucial that the approved method is applied to determine the shape of the scheme implemented, which will allow the derivation of the reliability hurdle rate. The new method is suitable for implementation where the IBR quality regulation mechanism has been adopted by the national electricity authorities. Furthermore, the reliability hurdle rate derived can be used to compare the investment decision against the improvement required in the continuity of supply indices. This ensures the trade-off between the expansion investment and improvement in the reliability levels
format Thesis
id oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/5094
institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:32:03.909Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2014
publishDateRange 2014
publishDateSort 2014
publisher Department of Electrical Engineering
publisherStr Department of Electrical Engineering
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/5094 Development of regional reliability hurdle rate for South Africa Van Harte, MA Electrical Engineering The reform of the electricity distribution industry has resulted in the national regulator authorities moving from Rate of Return (ROR) to Incentive Based Regulation (IBR) quality regulation mechanism. This has influenced the reporting, planning, design, operating and maintenance (O&M) philosophy surrounding distribution networks and service delivery to the end customer. The introduction of IBR regulation has created a need to understand how the IBR scheme implemented will influence the capital and operating investment decisions. The aim of the work leading up to this thesis has been to develop reliability hurdle rates that include the effect of the IBR scheme implemented by the national regulator authority of South Africa. This will enable the network planner to compare the investment decision with the reward / penalty scheme. The thesis addresses the challenges facing distribution network planning to achieve the appropriate (optimal) balance of investment cost vs. reliability levels. Value Based Reliability Planning (VBRP) methodology is an approach to evaluate capital investment decisions by quantifying, in economic terms, the benefits of improving reliability (System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) per capital cost required) by comparing different reliability improvement alternatives. This is achieved by relating the investment decision to the reward / penalty scheme introduced by National Electricity Regulator for South Africa (NERSA). To reach this goal this thesis derived a reliability hurdle rate by utilising benefit-to-cost analysis principles by considering the shape of the reward / penalty scheme. Furthermore, this necessitates the determination of the optimal balance between investment decisions to obtain improvement in the continuity of supply indices. One of the fundamental objectives is therefore to relate the IBR and VBRP in an efficient and effective way, that is the aim of the national regulator authority. A new method to determine a regional and national reliability hurdle rate is proposed by the thesis. This is a first step in obtaining an optimal expansion alternative and allows the planner to compare the preferred alternative selected against a hurdle rate. Since the method considers the reward / penalty scheme, the thesis first reviews the principles that influence the quality regulation mechanisms and the benefit-to-cost analysis techniques. The second step demonstrates the derivation of the reliability hurdle rate utilising the reward / penalty scheme adopted within South Africa. Parameters considered include the number of customers and the interruption indices in each region. The application studies demonstrate the derivation of the regional reliability hurdle rate from the six regions within South Africa. This allows the derivation of regional reliability hurdle rate from the different regional reward / penalty schemes. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to understand the influence of different parameters, which will influence the regional reliability hurdle rate. The results from the case studies show that, when NERSA creates the reward / penalty scheme, it is crucial that the approved method is applied to determine the shape of the scheme implemented, which will allow the derivation of the reliability hurdle rate. The new method is suitable for implementation where the IBR quality regulation mechanism has been adopted by the national electricity authorities. Furthermore, the reliability hurdle rate derived can be used to compare the investment decision against the improvement required in the continuity of supply indices. This ensures the trade-off between the expansion investment and improvement in the reliability levels 2014-07-31T10:51:37Z 2014-07-31T10:51:37Z 2008 Master Thesis Masters MSc http://hdl.handle.net/11427/5094 eng application/pdf Department of Electrical Engineering Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Electrical Engineering
Van Harte, MA
Development of regional reliability hurdle rate for South Africa
thesis_degree_str Master's
title Development of regional reliability hurdle rate for South Africa
title_full Development of regional reliability hurdle rate for South Africa
title_fullStr Development of regional reliability hurdle rate for South Africa
title_full_unstemmed Development of regional reliability hurdle rate for South Africa
title_short Development of regional reliability hurdle rate for South Africa
title_sort development of regional reliability hurdle rate for south africa
topic Electrical Engineering
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/5094
work_keys_str_mv AT vanhartema developmentofregionalreliabilityhurdlerateforsouthafrica