Automatic scheduling of substation maintenance outages

Abstract

The goal of substation maintenance scheduling is to ensure that all substation equipment will function properly when called upon to operate or during its normal operation. All of the diagnostic testing and maintenance work, necessary to achieve this goal, must be performed in as efficient manner as possible. Two proposed methods for automatic scheduling of outage tasks for substations system maintenance using Tabu Search and Genetic Algorithms were studied. These methods investigated the implementation of the proposed techniques for solving the maintenance-scheduling problem, which consist of two combinatorial problems, work starting date and network configuration which is found without violating the power flow constraints. These advanced tools are a way to support maintenance schedulers and planners through automatic scheduling to reach the optimal system reliability. The methods performances were tested and checked through 5-Bus and IEEE 25 Bus Systems. The results showed that these methods are reliable and practical for the maintenance-scheduling problem of substations system.