OPTIMAL GENERATING-UNIT MAINTENANCE SCHEDULING FOR MULTIAREA SYSTEM WITH NETWORK CONSTRAINTS

This paper describes two new proposals for the optimal maintenance problem of isolated system without network constraints and multi-area system with network constraints. First, a simple and useful method is presented for the generating units maintenance problem of the isolated system by means of Linear Programming and Branch-And-Bound technique. Second, a new decomposition technique based on virtual load is proposed in order to solve the complicated multi-area generating units maintenance problem. The goal of the proposed approach is to level reserve margin for every area throughout the year. Namely, in the multi-area maintenance scheduling we take into account the power arrival capability to every area load demand with network constraints, in contrast to the power supply capability of generating units as generally considered by the conventional approaches without network constraints. Finally, an example of five areas system with network constraints is used to verify the proposed methodology and illustrate the application of the new approach to the multi-area maintenance problem. The results show that our approach is profitable and efficient for the multi-area power system.