A decomposition approach to generation maintenance scheduling with network constraints

Most unit maintenance scheduling packages consider the preventive maintenance schedule of generating units over a one or two year operational planning period in order to minimize the total operating cost while satisfying system energy requirements and maintenance constraints. In a global maintenance scheduling problem, we propose to consider network constraints in generation maintenance scheduling. The inclusion of network constraints in generating unit maintenance will increase the complexity of the problem, so we propose to decompose the global generator scheduling problem into a master problem and sub-problems using Benders decomposition. In the first stage. a master problem is solved to determine a solution for maintenance schedule decision variables. In the second stage, sub-problems are solved to minimize operating costs while satisfying the network constraints. Benders cuts based on the solution of the sub-problem are introduced to the master problem for improving the existing solution. The iterative procedure continues until an optimal or near optimal solution is found.