L Nechitoaia - Institute of Power Studies and D~ Bucharest ROMANIA

The new problems occurred in the European Eastern Countries, and not only, during the transition period, request new management tools. The free market conditions asks for a more appropriate evaluation of the consumers supply reliability, of the risk factors and possible damages, as well as of the minimum optimum investment; meanwhile, the power plants' management aims at improving customer satisfaction. The momentary notification of the power plant reliability could be a precious tool in the management strategies policies. The paper presents how to reach this target. The aim can be reached by developing a "Living reliability evaluation system "(LRES) in every power plant. It allows to emphasize the weak points of the plant and the minimum cut set events that could lead at the unit failure, as well as to draw conclusions on the predictive maintenance program, spare parts, optimum test intervals for stand-by components, operator training and instructions improvement. The evaluation method is a statistic-probabilistic method, implemented in the I.T. plant program, applied on the momentary ("living") process systems configuration.