Optimizing the Maintenance Schedule of a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Considering Different Maintenance Types and Operating Hours

An efficient maintenance schedule for gas turbines of power plants ensures a reliable electricity supply. This study addresses a generator maintenance scheduling problem arising from Taiwan’s combined cycle power plant with two notable characteristics, i.e., a specific sequence of various maintenance types and the concept of performing maintenance according to operational hours spent. The objective is to minimize the total maintenance cost. The problem is formulated as a Mixed Integer Linear Program which is solvable by an off-the-shelf exact solver, i.e., CPLEX. Moreover, a set of newly generated instances is proposed as benchmark instances for the problem. The instances generated are based on the realistic conditions obtained from the historical record of Taiwan’s combined cycle power plant. Computational studies are presented as interesting insights regarding the complexity of the problem and the factors driving the total maintenance costs.