A genetic-based methodology for evaluating requested outages of power network elements

The evaluation process of requested outages in power grids comprises a harmonious adjustment of maintenance needs placed by market participants, in which priorities and operational constraints are taken into account. It is a critical process for independent system operators (ISOs) since they were conceived for handling a huge amount of transactions, without affecting system reliability and market prices. This paper presents a methodology for the evaluation of requested outages, viewed as a constrained optimization problem due to its combinatorial nature. A genetic algorithm technique is adopted to obtain high-quality solutions. Simulation results with the IEEE 14-bus test system and part of a Brazilian system are presented to illustrate the proposed methodology.