ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a procedure to create the business case for justifying distribution automation. Although the main emphasis will be on extended control, the chapter explores the general principles for justifying substation automation (SA). Creating a business case considers the combination of hard and soft benefits — those that can be economically quantified and those that are intangible but influence the perception of a utility's performance. The chapter provides a review of benefit assessment methods and procedures for their quantification. It indicates the main hard benefits for distribution automation (DA) that are derived from the following areas: capital deferral or displacement of network assets associated with each function, savings in personnel, energy related savings, other operation and maintenance savings, and customer-related benefits.
