Some aspects of using maintenance scheduling algorithms in long range planning models

The main objective of the electric generation expansion planners is to provide the lowest cost plan among those corresponding to a given reliability criterion and to other technical limitations. Usually, in order to attain this objective, the system planners use large and sophisticated software packages. Checking the economic benefits of incorporating small DSM or NDT projects into the generation system, the user must be particularly careful in order to prevent the overestimation of their influence on the total production cost (fuel and O&M costs) and reliability of the system. A specific detailed case study is described based on the Israeli generation system data in order to estimate the impact of the above projects on the maintenance scheduling and on the objective function of long range generation expansion plans. The above approach may be implemented almost in all existing long range planning models, which have an internal algorithm for scheduling of the generating units maintenance by subperiods.