THE APPLICATION OF A COMPUTERISED DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR GENERATOR MAINTENANCE SCHEDULING: A SOUTH AFRICAN CASE STUDY

In the generator maintenance scheduling (GMS) problem, a schedule is sought for the planned maintenance outages of generating units in a power system. The GMS model considered in this paper is formulated as a mixed-integer quadratic program assuming a reliability objective, subject to certain constraints. A generic GMS solution methodology is derived, capable of solving general GMS problem instances that conform to this model structure, and implemented in a computerised decision support system. The decision support system is then used to solve a real-life case study in the South African national power system.