Generation maintenance scheduling in a liberalised electricity market

This paper presents a formulation of the classical generation maintenance scheduling problem for a generating company (GENCO) suited to a liberalised electricity market such as that in Great Britain (GB). It includes explicit consideration of the ‘spark spread’ for combined cycle gas turbines and the ‘dark spread’ for coal power stations. Given forecasts of these market variables, demand data, generation limits and maintenance requirements, the methodology promises to identify the best times at which maintenance activities should be carried out for each generator in a company's portfolio. By minimising the total costs and maximising the total profit, the results are presented showing the effects on a GENCO's optimal maintenance schedule within the GB market. A discussion is then presented on the results and a conclusion drawn from the discussion.