Energy cost based technique for maintenance scheduling of generating systems

The two parameters of reliability and production cost are important in deciding the generating units´ preventive maintenance scheduling. In this paper, a new approach for maintenance scheduling of generating units based on levelizing the energy cost has been developed. The energy cost is divided into two parts. The first portion is the energy-production cost while the other is the outage cost (unreliability cost). The technique proposed has been applied to the IEEE Reliability Test System (IEEE-RTS). The preventive maintenance schedule has been compared with other techniques (i.e. levelizing Energy Index of Reliability and levelizing Loss of Load Expectation). The effect of preventive maintenance on energy cost has been presented and discussed