Optimal maintenance strategies for transmission systems using the Genetic Algorithm

Electric power transmission utilities not only decrease their operation costs, but also take opportunities to maximize their profit. While they should operate to meet customer needs for reliability which is one of major concerns of power delivery. Therefore they need to make the maintenance strategies considering the tradeoff between cost and reliability. In this paper, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to find optimal maintenance strategies for transmission systems. To consider aged and much different equipment, the equipment state model through modified semi-Markov chain is proposed. Also, the effects of equipment failure on the system are presented in terms of a cost using the DC-Optimal Power Flow (OPF). The results on the IEEE 9-bus system show the optimal maintenance strategy which minimizes operation costs.