ELECTRIC POWER RESEARCH INSTITUTE

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20 September 1982

    

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The Honorable John E. Bryson
President SFr, ws
California Public Utility Commission CE OF Tue pRES®
California State Building, Room 5026

350 McAllister Street ‘

San Francisco, California 94102

Dear John:

I am writing to follow up on the question you raised at the EPRI Advisory
Council meeting in San Diego on transmission and distribution system
reliability. Following the meeting, we read the CPUC report, and I
believe we understand the basis of the conclusions.

We agree that transmission and distribution outages are worthy of
substantial research. In fact, the Northeast blackout in 1965 was one
of the factors leading to the creation of EPRI. We have identified
almost 100 EPRI projects, listed in the attached tables, which relate
to T&D system reliability. The table divides projects into three
broad categories:

oO Design and analysis for reliable service
© Component reliability
© Maintainability ami restoration of service

One of our activities under design and analysis‘ is to strengthen the
mathematical tools balancing generation, transmission, and distribution -
reliability. This is a complex job requiring new mathematical constructs
and an inmense amount of data. We also have developed tools to make the
transmission system more forgiving of the kinds of disturbances that
triggered the significant blackouts of the last two decades.

Component improvements will also help improve system reliability. Our
research is helping to solve problems in electrochemical treeing and
concentric neutral corrosion of underground residential distribution
cables, which is particularly useful to California consumers where
underground distribution is extensive. We have developed devices to
protect the system fran lightning, the major cause nationally of

Headquarters: 3412 Hillview Avenue, Post Office Box 10412, Palio Alto, CA 94303 (415) 855-2000
Washington Office: 1800 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Suite 700, Washington, OC 20036 {202} 872-9222
The Honorable John E. Bryson -2- 20 September 1982

distribution outages, and certainly important in the Sierras. We
are working on the major causes of outages except one that apparently
is important in California--motor vehicle collisions with powerline
poles. Perhaps the new California drunk-driving law will help with
this.

Service restoration and maintenance have not received much emphasis
in our program because other work was deemed to be of higher
priority. We have sponsored several projects to provide better
maintenance tools and procedures. Additional work is planned in the
next five years.

We would be interested in your comments on our program and would
welcome an opportunity to brief you further on these efforts, as well
as the overall EPRI program. As a result of his dicussions with you
at Aspen, Dwain Spencer has suggested that you might be receptive to
such a meeting. Dick Balzhiser will be in touch with you to

schedule such a meeting, and I am hopeful that your schedule will
accommodate it, either here at EPRI or in San Francisco.

Very truly yours,

fey. Gt

Floyd L. Culler
President

FLC:RWZ: vw
cc: Advisory Council Members

R. E. Balzhiser
J. J. Dougherty