A review of maintenance scheduling approaches in deregulated power systems

Abstract

Traditionally, the electricity industry is fully regulated with a centrally controlled structure. The power system operator has full technical and costing information as well as a full control over the operation and maintenance of power system equipment. Recently, many countries have gone through privatization of their electricity industries unbundling the integrated power system into a number of separate deregulated business entities. The preventive maintenance of power system equipment in the restructured electricity industries is no longer controlled centrally, and none of these entities currently have explicit accountability for maintenance activities. The approaches used to schedule the maintenance activities in the centralized system are not ideal for addressing the new deregulated environments. In recent years a few research publications has been reported in this area. This paper presents a review and analysis of these reported maintenance scheduling approaches for power system equipment in the changed environment.