Maintenance scheduling by using simulated annealing method [for power plants]

The thermal power plant generator maintenance scheduling problem is addressed. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer programming problem, and it is solved by using an optimization method known as simulated annealing. Since the simulated annealing method assumes an analogy between a physical multiparticle system and a combinatorial optimization problem, a global minimum can be found with high probability through a careful annealing process. Numerical results on a real-scale test system are given, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated