To illustrate the Billinton/Allan solution, consider a simple power distribution system:
Naïve view = 0.01% annual outage. Actual = Loss of both feeds simultaneously = 1/2000 chance per year, but when switch fails → 10-hour outage. It is the one whose failures are expected,
“The most reliable system is not the one that never fails. It is the one whose failures are expected, infrequent, short, and harmless .” For most of the 20th century, engineers designed
The text covers basic probability theory, binomial distributions, network modeling (simple and complex systems), Markov processes, and frequency/duration techniques. For most of the 20th century
Draw your system as a Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) – series vs. parallel.
For most of the 20th century, engineers designed systems using the "deterministic criterion." A power system, for example, was deemed reliable if it could withstand the sudden loss of the largest generating unit or a single transmission line (the infamous ). While simple, this approach ignores two fundamental truths: components fail randomly, and not all failures have the same consequence.
The genius of their approach was showing that any complex system—from a satellite to a factory conveyor line—can be reduced to a combination of these three archetypes.