Reliability evaluation for different power plant busbar layouts by using sequential Monte Carlo simulation

•The most commonly used busbar topologies such as one-and-half breaker and two-breaker are studied in this paper.•A complete technical and economical comparison of these topologies is presented.•A numerical method based on the Sequential Monte-Carlo Simulation (SMCS) is used to evaluate the reliability of system.•The reliability indexes such as EENS, LOLE and ELC are calculated.•A real substation layout in Iran national grid is considered as case study. In deregulated electricity market environment, the power system works with lower stability margin due to demand fluctuations. Therefore, in restructured power systems all generation companies attempt to increase reliability of their own power plants. The arrangement of the busbar layouts in power stations has a great effect on the power system reliability. This paper develops a sequential Monte Carlo simulation (SMCS) to evaluate the effect of generator breaker and bus-section on the reliability indices of one and half and two-breaker busbar layouts. Karun III power station layout in Iran national grid (ING) is considered as a real world system case study. The most commonly used reliability indices such as loss of load expectation (LOLE), expected energy not supplied (EENS) and expected load curtailment (ELC) are used to evaluate the reliability in this paper. Economic and technical evaluations of reliability indices variation in presence of generator breaker and bus-section are presented. Simulation results show that how variation of forced outage rate (FOR) of generator and generator breaker affect on the reliability indices.