Preventive maintenance optimization in hybrid solar gas power system using gravitational search algorithm

This paper addresses a Gravitational Search metaheureustic optimization method to solve a preventive maintenance (PM) problem for hybrid solar gas power system. In this work, we consider the situation where system and its components have several ranges of performance levels. Such systems are called multi-state systems (MSS). To enhance system availability or (reliability), possible schedule preventive maintenance actions are performed to equipment's and affect strongly the effective age. The objective is to develop an algorithm to generate an optimal sequence of maintenance actions providing system working with the desired level of availability or reliability during its lifetime with minimal maintenance cost rate. To evaluate the multi-state system availability, a fast method on the universal moment generating function (UMGF) is suggested. The Gravitational search approach as an optimization technique and adapted to this PM optimization problem.