Incorporating generating unit maintenance scheduling in power system reliability evaluation

Scheduling generating unit maintenance is an important and necessary function in both vertically integrated and deregulated electric power utility environments. The objective in scheduling preventive maintenance is to ensure that the resulting risk to the system does not exceed a predetermined acceptable level. In a deterministic approach, the acceptable margin is either, a percentage of the available capacity or load, or a value equal to the largest loaded unit. A hybrid approach designated as the health levelization technique that combines a probabilistic evaluation and an acceptable deterministic criterion into a single framework is described in this thesis. The health levelization approach is used to schedule generating unit maintenance on both annual and short term bases. The development of the health levelization technique and its application in both short term and long term generating unit maintenance scheduling is presented in this thesis. The effect on maintenance scheduling of different factors such as load profiles, load forecast uncertainty, and time dependent unit unavailability is examined.; The concepts and procedures presented can be used to schedule generating unit maintenance in both vertically integrated and deregulated power systems. The concepts presented are illustrated by application to two test systems. These systems are used to examine the application of the developed concepts to single systems with different sizes and compositions, single deregulated systems with independently owned generating units and generating companies, and independent systems connected by tie lines. The research and the developed concepts presented in this thesis should prove valuable to those responsible for maintenance planning in electric power systems.