The overall goal of this book is to introduce algorithms for improving the economic posture of a utility company in a restructured power system by promoting cost-effective maintenance schedules. This book's topic is very timely as the electric utility industry is undergoing a major restructuring, and what used to be vertically integrated is now being unbundled. The restructuring has given rise to a number of separate business entities with their own objectives. In this breakup, the issue of maintenance scheduling has been missed completely since none of these entities currently have explicit accountability for this subject. The authors offer a logical alternative to traditional electric utility maintenance practices and a basis for making maintenance decisions. Maintenance scheduling problems are formulated as decomposed problems. This signifies the nature of restructured power systems with self-interested entities and optimizes potential revenues while meeting constraints such as fuel schedules, emission constraints, hourly load demands, and network limits. Coordination of short- and long-term maintenance scheduling is also presented. The book shows by numerous derivations and examples that careful planning and good coordination among self-interested entities in restructured power systems are essential to achieving an optimal trade-off between the cost of maintenance and service reliability. Maintenance Scheduling in Restructured Power Systems includes a variety of models, solutions and ideas that will be invaluable to engineers, consultants, manufacturers, students, and others working and studying in the utility field.

The overall goal of this book is to introduce algorithms for improving the economic posture of a utility company in a restructured power system by promoting cost-effective maintenance schedules. This book's topic is very timely as the electric utility industry is undergoing a major restructuring, and what used to be vertically integrated is now being unbundled. The restructuring has given rise to a number of separate business entities with their own objectives. In this breakup, the issue of maintenance scheduling has been missed completely since none of these entities currently have explicit accountability for this subject. The authors offer a logical alternative to traditional electric utility maintenance practices and a basis for making maintenance decisions. Maintenance scheduling problems are formulated as decomposed problems. This signifies the nature of restructured power systems with self-interested entities and optimizes potential revenues while meeting constraints such as fuel schedules, emission constraints, hourly load demands, and network limits. Coordination of short- and long-term maintenance scheduling is also presented. The book shows by numerous derivations and examples that careful planning and good coordination among self-interested entities in restructured power systems are essential to achieving an optimal trade-off between the cost of maintenance and service reliability. Maintenance Scheduling in Restructured Power Systems includes a variety of models, solutions and ideas that will be invaluable to engineers, consultants, manufacturers, students, and others working and studying in the utility field.