In the future deregulated environment. as in the present
environment. reliability of distribution systems is expected
to be a very important utility issue. A major approach to
ensure system reliability is to monitor the system on its
gradual path from healthy to sick and detect sources of
system degradation. When equipment begins to deteriorate.
intermittent incipient faults persist in the system.
Predictive maintenance performed on a distribution system
monitors system conditions and analyzes the measurements
to detect incipient faults. and equipment or system
deterioration, and then diagnose these faults and predict
how long the system can continue to operate safely.