The eLearning Center for Gatlin Education Services

Overview

In general terms, reliability is a property of a system that describes the likelihood that the system will successfully perform as intended. In the most exact terms, reliability is the statistical probability that the system will be able to perform its intended mission.

In this course, you will learn how to assess power system reliability quantitatively, and how to interpret the results of this numerical understanding of reliability. This course will give you an introduction to the fundamental concepts of reliability technology as applied to electric power systems serving industrial and commercial facilities. Because it is not possible to talk about the reliability without looking at the reliability of the electric utility system that supplies these installations, we will also spend some time with the techniques used to assess reliability of larger systems as well.

Although the specifics of electric utility system reliability are briefly covered, the majority of the information on reliability in this course is applicable to other disciplines. For example, the concepts of Availability, Mean Time to Failure and the relationship between components in series versus components in parallel apply equally to an electrical circuit or a chemical process.

The student must take a multiple-choice quiz consisting of twenty-five (25) questions at the end of this course to obtain PDH credits.

Specific Knowledge or Skill Attained

This course teaches the following specific knowledge and skills:

  · What is reliability?
  · Calculating failure rate and repair time for components
  · What are availability, mean time to failure and mean time to repair
  · Building a reliability model
  · Series vs. parallel components
  · Calculating failure rate and repair time for systems
  · Reliability analysis by network reduction vs. simulation
  · Finding reliability data needed to build a model
  · Electric utility distribution reliability
  · Determining best practices for system optimization by inspection

State Board Acceptance

This course can be used by professional engineers to fulfill PDH requirements mandated by state and provincial licensing boards. Decatur Professional Development is an approved provider of continuing education in all states that pre-approve course providers. In all other states that mandate continuing education for engineers, it is the individual engineer's responsibility to determine the suitability of activities for PDH credit. The state boards typically accept online* courses that cover technical, managerial** or ethical content and which are relevant to the practice of engineering. The course must have a clear purpose or objective with a content that will maintain, improve or expand the skills and knowledge of the licensee's field of practice. For questions about your mandatory PDH requirements, visit the website of your state licensing board.

*Online courses are accepted by all state licensing boards that mandate continuing education. Other than New York (which limits online courses to 18 PDH) and Iowa (which limits online courses to 6 PDH), there are no limits placed by other states on the number of hours that can be earned through online continuing education. Consult with your state licensing board if you have any questions about the acceptability of online courses.

**The New York State Board of Engineers does not accept general office management courses, but will accept project management courses that are offered by an approved provider and that are technical in nature and contribute to the engineer's professional practice.