IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 21, NO.
4, NOVEMBER 2006
Modeling Weather-Related Failures
of Overhead Distribution Lines
Yujia Zhou, Member, IEEE, Anil Pahwa, Fellow, IEEE, and Shie-Shien Yang
Abstract—Weather is one of the major factors affecting the
reliability of power distribution systems. An effective method to
model weather’s impact on overhead distribution lines’ failure
rates will enable utilities to compare their systems’ reliabilities
under different weather conditions. This will allow them to make
the right decisions to obtain the best operation and maintenance
plan to reduce impacts of weather on reliabilities. Two methods
to model overhead distribution lines’ failure rates are presented
in this paper. The first is based on a Poisson regression model,
and it captures the counting nature of failure events on overhead
distribution lines. The second is a Bayesian network model, which
uses conditional probabilities of failures given different weather
states. Both methods are used to predict the yearly weather-related
failure events on overhead lines. This is followed by a Monte Carlo
analysis to determine prediction bounds. The results obtained by
these models are compared to evaluate their salient features.
Index Terms—Bayesian networks, power distribution lines,
power distribution meteorological factors, power distribution
reliability, regression analysis.
I. INTRODUCTION
OWER delivery companies are paying more attention
P nowadays to reliability of electric service due to increased
expectations from customers and regulators. Compared to
historical reliability assessments, predictive reliability assess-
ments are more significant since they are more informative in
the sense of guiding utilities to identify future reliability-in-
volved activities. Good predictive reliability assessments need
good predictive data. Whether using the traditional analytical
technique or the powerful Monte Carlo simulation to assess dis-
tribution system reliabilities, network topology and component
reliability data are always indispensable. Network topology is
the least varied factor and is normally known before there are
any changes in the future; therefore, there is less concern about
it. Component reliability data consist of component failure rates
and component outage duration. Component failure rates are
attracting more attention with the availability of more historical
data and clearer realization of poor reliability prediction caused
by considering constant failure rates [1].
Manuscript received October 25, 2005; revised March 21, 2006. This work
was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant ECS-
0501288. Paper no. TPWRS-00691-2005.
Y. Zhou is with KEMA T&D Consulting, Raleigh, NC 27609 USA (e-mail:
yzhou@kema.us).
A. Pahwa is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Kansas State Uni-
versity, Manhattan, KS 66502 USA (e-mail: pahwa@ksu.edu).
S.-S. Yang is with the Department of Statistics, Kansas State University, Man-
hattan, KS 66502 USA (e-mail: ssyang@stat.ksu.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2006.881131
0885-8950/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
1683
Brown [2] modeled changes in failure rates with respect to
condition scores as exponentially increasing and implemented
calibration of failure rates to the historical reliability indexes.
Vegetation-related failure rates for overhead distribution feeders
were studied in [3], where a linear regression model, an expo-
nential regression model, and a neural network were considered.
Effects of component aging on failure rates were emphasized
in [4] and [5]. An adaptive-fuzzy model to predict effects of
features including wind, lightning, tree density, and tree trim-
ming on failure rates of overhead distribution lines was pre-
sented in [6]. Weather-related failure rates were addressed in
[4] and [7]–[9], where rough classifications of adverse weather
and normal weather were made.
In relation to reliability issues, it is noticed that the features
of overhead distribution lines distinguish themselves from other
system components. Overhead lines are the most vulnerable
components in distribution systems. They make up the highest
percentage in the total number of equipment units in distribution
systems. Most outages are due to faults on overhead lines, and
thus, reliability indexes of distribution systems are the most sen-
sitive to failure rates of overhead lines [10]. Obviously, finding
a good failure rate model for overhead distribution lines is the
most important step for analyzing the component reliability data
and for predicting system reliabilities.
Empirical analysis and outage study show that overhead lines
are highly susceptible to weather, trees, animals and human
factors, etc. [11]. Among these factors, weather can be ex-
tremely hazardous. It not only directly causes shorts or breaks
on overhead lines but also interacts with trees in damaging the
electricity delivery path. Moreover, weather-related failures
including weather-caused and most tree-caused failures are
random and hard to prevent completely. Thus, a good method
to evaluate weather’s impacts on overhead distribution lines, to
track the random process of failure events in adverse weather
conditions, and to estimate failure rates of overhead distribution
lines based on quantitative weather conditions is imperative
for helping utilities better understand weather’s impacts and
choose a better operation and maintenance plan.
This paper presents two methods based on a Poisson regres-
sion model and a Bayesian network model to address this need.
Furthermore, it addresses some of the issues from previous re-
search related to this topic. For example, only two or three clas-
sifications of weather states and their duration were consid-
ered in the published literature, which is clearly insufficient to
predict weather-related failures. Confidence bounds for the ex-
pected failure rates at a specified confidence are determined for
both models. These confidence bounds are used in the Monte
Carlo simulations to determine prediction bounds for the yearly
failures.
1684
TABLE I
WEATHER CODES AND CONDITIONS
II. DATA ACQUISITION
A typical outage management system in utilities records nec-
essary information related to circuit outages including service
area, circuit reference number, outage cause, outage weather,
outage duration, number of customers affected, tripped equip-
ments, outage date and time, etc. Most utilities have similar
explanations for these items, except outage cause and weather
during outage. Trees and weather are important causes, and they
are almost always included by every utility.
The weather during outage is a set of classified weather
conditions that utilities define based on their priorities and
local weather characteristics. An example form is illustrated in
Table I. The classifications in Table I are rough and sometimes
overlap each other. However, the most reliable weather infor-
mation can always be obtained from the local weather stations,
which record weather data including date, temperature, weather
phenomenon, snow/ice, precipitation, pressure, and wind on a
daily basis.
Wind, icing, and lightning are the three most influential
weather phenomena [11]. Data provided by weather station
contain detailed wind data, such as wind gust speed, resultant
speed, average speed and their directions, etc. Icing relates
to freezing rain, ice pellets, or crystals, and its thickness is
described in inches. Thunderstorm shown in the entry for
weather phenomenon is related to lightning. However, as a
matter of fact, more lightning strokes on a thunderstorm day
may cause more outages than less lightning strokes on a thun-
derstorm day. The stronger the stroke is, the more harmful it
will be. Therefore, the simple classification based on lightning
or non-lightning day is not complete to represent its character-
istics. Further details on each lightning stroke event including
date, time, latitude, longitude, and peak current of the lightning
stroke are needed to study their effects on reliability.
Daily wind gust speed is the only variable selected to study
wind effects for this research because it has high correlation with
the other measures of wind speeds. Daily aggregate lightning
stroke currents are calculated to represent the lightning impacts.
Although icing has a big impact on overhead lines, it is truly a
rare event, and it is appropriate to regard icing as a special event
and separate the analysis of icing from the other weather factors
to keep the analysis simple. Daily number of failures within the
study area is considered as the response variable.
The study area consists of 30 feeder circuits from nine
substations and 391.1 miles of overhead distribution lines in
and around Manhattan, Kansas. The State Climate Office at
Kansas State University provided the weather data, including
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 21, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2006
wind speed, which was recorded at the weather station at the
Manhattan Regional Airport. Vaisala, Inc. of Phoenix, Arizona
provided the lightning stroke data for an area enclosed by a
circle of 9 miles radius around the city of Manhattan. This circle
encloses all the feeders of this study as well as the weather
station. Magnitudes of all the lightning strokes in this area for
each day of the study were added to find the aggregate lightning
stroke for each of these days. More accurate data for lightning
can be obtained by considering strokes only in an area in the
vicinity of distribution feeders. Capability to extract such data
did not exist when this research was performed but will be
considered in the future studies.
III. POISSON REGRESSION MODEL
Responses in Poisson regression models follow the Poisson
distribution, which are frequently encountered in counting
events. Intuitively, the number of failures that take place in
the overhead distribution lines is a counting process and was
assumed to follow a Poisson process, given fixed outside
environment and equipment attributes.
A. Introduction to Poisson Regression Model
The mean response in the Poisson regression model, normally
denoted by , is assumed to be a function of explanatory vari-
ables [12]
(1)
Some commonly used functions for mean of the Poisson re-
gression model are [13]
(2)
(3)
(4)
which consist of two parts: the link function, and the linear
term, .
The linear term is constructed in similar ways as in the linear
regression model. Variables are selected to gain the best model
performance. Link function is the “link” between linear term
and the mean response. It can be “identity” as in (2), “exponen-
tial” as in (3), “natural log” as in (4), etc. In fact, any function
can be the link function.
Error terms in the Poisson regression model are no
longer normally distributed with constant variance. Instead,
their distribution is a function of the distribution of response
variables, which is Poisson. Maximum-likelihood estimation
procedure is used for parameter estimations. Point predictions
and confidence bounds can be calculated using standard for-
mulas [13].
B. Analysis on Historical Data
Assuming the number of failures follow the Poisson distribu-
tion with failure rates, . The lightning stroke current
and the wind gust speed influence failure rates via
the model
(5)
ZHOU et al.: MODELING WEATHER-RELATED FAILURES OF OVERHEAD DISTRIBUTION LINES 1685

Fig. 1. Histogram of weather-related failures from 1998 to 2003.

Fig. 3. The 3-D regression plane based on the Poisson regression model.

Fig. 2. Histogram of expanded bin “more” from Fig. 1.

This assumption of the Poisson distribution for failure events

not only comes out of the counting nature of the response
variables but also matches the facts observed from the data.
The Poisson distribution is always positive, skewed, and prone
to produce small numbers. As a matter of fact, advancements
in protection of power distribution systems effectively help
reduce the number of failures in most situations. Therefore,
occurrences of large number of failures in a day are truly rare
events. Fig. 1 shows histogram of failures (failures/per day) in
the study system, whereas Fig. 2 is a histogram of the bin named
“more” in Fig. 1. Data used to plot these figures are given in
the Appendix. Both Figs. 1 and 2 show obvious decreasing Fig. 4. Contour plot based on the Poisson regression model.
frequencies for higher failures, which further confirms the rare
nature of failure events.
• wind gust speed natural log of the lightning stroke cur-
C. Model Construction rent— .
Equation (3) with exponential link function is chosen to be the The resultant Poisson regression model is
form of the Poisson regression model based on previous empir-
(6)
ical findings [2], [3] and the fact that the failure rates are non-
negative. where is 3.0832, is 0.057, is 0.3817, and is
Explanatory variables in the linear term were selected 0.0019. is a constant to convert number of failures to
by all-possible regression procedures from a pool of candidate failure rates. Thus, with equal to days mile ,
explanatory variables, including wind gust speed, square root is the failure rate per mile per year.
and natural log of wind gust speed, lightning stroke current, A three-dimensional (3-D) regression plane is shown in Fig. 3
square root and natural log of lightning stroke current, and in- to visualize increasing trend in the failure rates with increasing
teractions between wind and lightning represented by multipli- wind and lightning intensities from the model given by (6).
cation of any two previously listed variables. Fig. 4 shows a contour plot based on (6), where the patches show
Similar to the minimum root mean-square error (MSE) the failure rate values along the projected lines.
principle and in the linear regression model, deviance and
overdispersion measures [13] are important gauges for the best IV. BAYESIAN MODEL
fit in the Poisson regression model. Considering these measures The Bayesian network model captures the probabilistic na-
along with the model parsimony principle, three explanatory ture of failure events. Instead of using a function, this model
variables were selected, which are uses the conditional probability table to map the relationship
• natural log of the lightning stroke current— ; between the weather and the failure rates of the overhead distri-
• wind gust speed— ; bution lines. This technique is a powerful tool to solve problems
1686 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 21, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2006

Fig. 5. One-layer Bayesian network for failure rate prediction.

Fig. 6. Histogram of lightning stroke currents from 1998 to 2003 (non-thun-
derstorm days excluded).

with uncertainty and complexity. Visualizing the multivariate

probabilistic system in a directed graphical model provides a
friendly interface to help in understanding and in solving prob-
lems efficiently [14].

A. Introduction to Bayesian Networks

A Bayesian network is an acyclic directed graph (DAG).
Nodes represent random variables, whereas arcs represent
the relationship between the “parent” node and the “child”
node. For discrete Bayesian networks, every “parent” node is
associated with a conditional probability table (CPT) given its Fig. 7. Histogram of natural log of lightning stroke currents from 1998 to 2003
parents, known as the parameters of the Bayesian networks (non-thunderstorm days excluded).
[15]. A Bayesian network is a compact representation of joint
probabilities. Multiplication of all the conditional probabilities
is the joint probability of all the variables [16]

(7)

where is the random variable, , and

are the “parent” nodes of .
Define . With known struc-
ture and completely observed data, the maximum-likelihood es-
timate for is
number of cases where and Fig. 8. Natural log of lightning stroke current versus average number of fail-
(8)
number of cases where ures.
Simply put, “learning” with completely observed data is actu-
TABLE II
ally a “counting” process. CLASSIFICATION RESULTS
B. Model Construction
A simple one-layer Bayesian network with three nodes, repre-
senting the three random variables—wind gust speed, lightning
stroke current, and the number of failures, was built as shown in
Fig. 5.
Although continuous in nature, wind gusts, lightning stroke
currents, and the number of failures are classified into discrete current ranged from 2 to 65 241 kA in the historical data, most of
levels for the sake of simplicity and due to ease of handling which is clustered around 2500 kA, as shown Fig. 6. Extremely
discrete Bayesian models. The discrete classifications should uneven distribution and big range of the lightning data make
be based on a careful scrutiny of the data so that data points it very hard to classify them based on raw data. However, the
in the same level have an influence as similar as possible and in natural log transformation of the stroke data led to a quite even
different levels have an influence as distinct as possible to reduce distribution, as shown in Fig. 7.
the loss of information from grouping the data. Furthermore, The average number of failures per day was calculated and
the resultant classifications should keep an adequate number of plotted against transformed lightning data, as shown in Fig. 8.
data points in each level, e.g., six or more, to assure reasonable Considering the steep changes in average number of failures for
accuracy in estimation and prediction. days with large lightning stroke values, it is desirable to have
Sometimes, to obtain the best classification, variables need finer classification in that range. However, data insufficiency
to be transformed. For example, the aggregate lightning stroke makes this realization difficult. The final classification, which
ZHOU et al.: MODELING WEATHER-RELATED FAILURES OF OVERHEAD DISTRIBUTION LINES 1687

TABLE III
CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY TABLE

was a tradeoff between change in lightning impacts and preci- TABLE IV

sion in model parameter estimation, is tabulated in Table II. The FAILURE RATE MEDIAN WITHIN FAILURE LEVEL
wind gust classification and the failure classification were pro-
duced in a similar manner.

C. Conditional Probability Table

Parameters of the Bayesian network model, also known as the TABLE V
conditional probability table, are listed in Table III. Some of the CONFIDENCE INTERVALS FOR EXPECTED FAILURE RATES
zeros are a result of weather impacts. For example, weather state
1, which has the weakest wind and lightning level, cannot cause
large number of failures, thus leaving zeros in failure levels 6–8.
Some data entries are zeros because of insufficiency in the data.
For example, in weather states 6, 14, and 15, there are only 4, 1,
and 3 associated cases, which led to many zeros in those rows.
The conditional probability distribution within most weather
states resembles Poisson distribution with a large percentage of
low failure levels and faded percentage in high failure levels.
The resemblance is especially true for states with large number
of events, for example, weather states 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, and 11.
The probability distribution will tend to be Gaussian for states
with severe weather conditions since these conditions will cause
higher failures. Some evidence of this can be seen for state 13.

D. Average Failure Rate

The number of failures computed on per day basis was mul-
tiplied by the constant used in (6) to convert them to failure
rate expressed in per mile per year. Median failure rate in each
failure level based on these data are tabulated in Table IV. Av- where failures rate weather state is the average failure rate
erage failure rate in every weather state was then calculated as in weather state , . (failure level ) is the
follows: median failure rate in failure level , , associated
with Table IV. failure level weather state is the proba-
bility of getting failure level in weather state , as given in
failure rate weather state Table III.
The resultant average failure rates per mile per year, , in
failure level weather state each weather state are presented in Table V, whereas Fig. 9
shows the increasing trends in the average failure rates with ad-
failure level (9) verse weather.
1688
Fig. 9. Graphs showing the increasing failure rates with adverse weather.
E. Confidence Intervals for Expected Failure Rates
Failure rates listed in Table V are estimates of statistical aver-
ages based on a set of observations. The actual failure rates may
be different from the average values due to the random nature
of failure events. In other words, if similar weather conditions
existed over a different period of six years and everything else
in the system remained the same, we would observe a different
set of failures. Moreover, classification of weather states for the
Bayesian model can also lead to deviations. Specifically, rough
classification due to lack of data may create large deviation be-
tween the actual failure rates and the expected ones.
Irrespective of the shape of the distribution of the number
of failures in each weather state, the sampling distribution of
average number of failure can be approximated by a normal
distribution according to the central limit theorem. The standard
deviation of average number of failures in each weather state is
estimated as
(10)
where is the th observed failure rate given weather state ,
is the average number of failures given weather state , and
is the total number of events belonging to weather state .
T statistics is used to compute upper and lower bounds for
the expected failure rates at 90% confidence levels. The obtained
standard deviation and the 90% confidence bounds and
are listed in Table V along with the average number of
failures . results from the Monte Carlo simulations. The yearly expected
The estimated standard deviation for the average number of
failures follows the same trend as the average number of fail-
ures, i.e., with an increase in the average number of failures,
the estimated standard deviation also increases. This confirms
the assumption of positive correlation between expected means
and variances as found in the Poisson regression model. Since
weather state 14 had only one data point, an estimate of standard
deviation and confidence bounds could not be obtained.
V. YEARLY FAILURE PREDICTION AND VARIANCE ANALYSIS
Both the Poisson regression model and the Bayesian model
have two sorts of variances in yearly weather-related failure pre-
dictions. One is due to the model and data insufficiency, which
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 21, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2006
Fig. 10. Predicted weather-related number of failures in 1998 based on the
Bayesian model.
may introduce errors in the predicted failure rates. The other is
the variance due to the random nature of failure events. Even
if actual failure rates are exactly the same for all the time, the
number of failures that occurred may still vary from time to
time.
Monte Carlo simulation is the best way to quantify the
variance coming from the random nature of failure events.
Therefore, for any day with known weather conditions and
corresponding distribution for the number of failures, a random
number can be generated through simulation to represent the
number of failures for that day. For both the Poisson regression
model and the Bayesian model, the number of failures were
considered to have Poisson distribution. The expected failure
rate obtained from (6) was used for the regression model,
and that given in Table V for the specific weather state was
used for the Bayesian model. Results were divided by the
constant to convert the failure rates to number of failures
for that day. Applying this process for every day from 1998
to 2003 provides one sample for the number of failures for
those days. Aggregating daily number of failures in each year
results in yearly number of failures. Repeating this simulation
10 000 times gives that many samples of the yearly number
of failures.
Fig. 10 illustrates the weather-related failure distribution
for 1998 obtained from 10 000 Monte Carlo simulations based
on the Bayesian model. It is interesting to notice that normal
distribution best fits the yearly failure profile. In fact, yearly
weather-related failures are the aggregation of 365/366 inde-
pendent Poisson distributions, which meets conditions of the
central limit theorem. The other years in the study had similar
numbers of failures, their standard deviations, and 95% pre-
diction bounds from both the Poisson regression model and
the Bayesian model are summarized in Table VI. The yearly
expected numbers of failures from both the models appear to
be very similar to each other. Most of the observed numbers of
failures reside within the prediction bounds, except for 2001
and 2003.
To address deviation of the expected failure rates, the Monte
Carlo simulations were performed two more times for each
model, once with failure rates equal to the lower 90% confi-
dence bounds and then with failure rates equal to the upper 90%
confidence bounds. The 90% confidence bounds are provided in
Table V for the Bayesian model, and for the Poisson regression
ZHOU et al.: MODELING WEATHER-RELATED FAILURES OF OVERHEAD DISTRIBUTION LINES
TABLE VI
MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS, AND PREDICTION BOUNDS OF THE YEARLY
WEATHER-RELATED FAILURES USING THE EXPECTED FAILURE RATES
TABLE VII
SCENARIO ANALYSIS BASED ON DIFFERENT FAILURE RATES
model, they were computed using a procedure outlined in [13].
As shown in Table VII, the best estimate values are the same
values as the expected values in Table VI. In other words, they
are the results of Monte Carlo simulation with failure rates
for each weather state equal to the average value specified in
Table V for the Bayesian model and the fitted value from the
regression plane in Fig. 3 for the Poisson model. The worst
scenario shows the results with the upper bound of the failure
rates as input, and the best scenario shows the results with the
lower bound of the failure rates as input. The spread between
the best and the worst scenario is larger for the Bayesian model
in comparison to the Poisson regression model. The observed
values fall within the best and the worst scenario for all years
except 2000, 2001, and 2003 for the Poisson regression model
and except 2000 and 2003 for the Bayesian model. Since the
Bayesian model has a larger spread, it is more suitable for
representing the historical data, which appears to have a large
variability.
VI. MODEL COMPARISON AND CONCLUSION
The Poisson regression model is intuitive in the way it con-
siders the counting nature of failure events and assumes Poisson
1689
distributed response variables. The assumption of Poisson dis-
tributed failure events is based on two conditions: rare events of
large numbers and increasing variances with increasing means,
which were both proven to be true from analysis of the histor-
ical data.
The Bayesian model is based on the thought that a certain
range of wind and lightning intensity may have similar impacts
on the overhead lines. It categorized numerous combinations of
the wind gust speeds and the lightning stroke currents into 15
weather states and tried to capture the probabilistic relationship
between each weather state and the failure level. In fact, the con-
ditional probability distribution reflected in the resultant con-
ditional probability table is observed to resemble the Poisson
distribution.
Although both models showed comparable performance for
the current problem, the Bayesian model is preferable due to
the following reasons. First, the conditional probability table
gives the distribution of failure events based on actual data,
which is more informative than the function produced from
the Poisson regression model. Second, the Bayesian model in
this task is easier to implement than the Poisson regression
model, which requires numerical search procedure. Third, the
Bayesian model can be easily updated when additional training
data are available, but the Poisson regression model needs to
be rebuilt.
Both the Poisson regression model and the Bayesian model
provide good ways to model the failure rates of overhead dis-
tribution lines. Similar predictions from both methods give a
strong proof of correctness in using the historical data. The dif-
ferences between the model outputs and the observed values
should be analyzed carefully. Variance due to the random na-
ture of failure events and variance due to the variation of the
expected failure rates were analyzed in this paper. With large
enough historical data, the latter variance would be greatly re-
duced, whereas the former one could not be eliminated. These
uncertainties could be further identified by bootstrap resampling
methods, which is a topic for further research. Also, when ad-
ditional data are available in the future, we can more accurately
check the adequacy of our models by testing our models to pre-
dict output based on the new data.
The methodologies presented in this paper are useful for
utilities to benchmark the system performance in a given year.
If the observed numbers of failures fall within the predicted
range, no action will be needed. On the other hand, if the
observed failures are higher than the worst-case scenario, the
utility needs to do further investigation to find the causes and
fix them to prevent large number of failures in the future.
However, if the observed value is outside of the predicted
range but lower than the best scenario, no action will be
needed. The statistical nature of analysis allows utilities to
get a better understanding of their system performance instead
of reliability indexes, such as SAIFI, which provide a mean
value but no information on the random nature of failures due
to weather variations.
APPENDIX
Failure data used in Figs. 1 and 2 are shown in Table VIII.
1690
TABLE VIII
FAILURE DATA USED IN FIGS. 1 AND 2
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Westar Energy, Topeka, KS,
for providing outage data, Vaisala, Inc. for providing lightning
stroke data, and M. Knapp of the State Climate Office at Kansas
State University for providing the weather data.
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Yujia Zhou (M’04) received the B.S.E.E. degree from Southeast University,
Nanjing, China, in 2001 and the M.S. degree from Kansas State University,
Manhattan, in 2004.
She is presently a Senior Engineer at KEMA Inc., Raleigh, NC, where she
specializes in distribution system reliability analysis, equipment failure rate
modeling, and statistical reliability assessment for electric utilities.
Ms. Zhou was the recipient of the Rockwell Scholarship, Baogang Scholar-
ship, and Honored Students Scholarship in Southeast University.
Anil Pahwa (F’03) received the B.E. (honors) degree in electrical engineering
from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, in 1975, the M.S.
degree in electrical engineering from University of Maine, Orono, in 1979, and
the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University, College
Station, in 1983.
Since 1983, he has been with Kansas State University, Manhattan, where
presently he is a Professor and Interim Head in the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department. He worked at ABB-ETI, Raleigh, NC, during sabbat-
ical from August 1999 to August 2000. His research interests include distribu-
tion automation, distribution system planning and analysis, distribution system
reliability, and intelligent computational methods for distribution system appli-
cations.
Dr. Pahwa is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and ASEE.
Shie-Shien Yang received the Ph.D degree from Iowa State University, Ames,
in 1976.
He is a Professor of statistics at Kansas State University (KSU), Manhattan.
He taught at the Mathematics Departments of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, MA, and Indiana University, Indianapolis, before
joining the Statistics Department at KSU in 1979. His research interests include
mixed effects models, reliability theory, and nonparametric statistics.