Auction price-based thermal unit maintenance scheduling by reactive tabu search

This paper presents an improved both profit and cost based maintenance scheduling approach by using Reactive Tabu search (RTS) in competitive environment. In competitive power markets, electricity prices are determined by balance between demand and supply in electric power exchanges or bilateral contracts. So it is essential for system operation planners and market participants to take the volatility of electricity price into consideration. In the proposed maintenance scheduling method, the optimal combinatorial maintenance-scheduling problem is solved by using Reactive Tabu Search in the light of the electricity prices trend. This method proposes a new objective function by which the most profitable maintenance schedule would be attained. As an objective function, opportunity Loss of Maintenance (OLM) is adopted to maximize the profit of Generation Companies (GENCOS). Finally, the proposed maintenance scheduling is applied to a practical power system test model to verify the advantages and effectiveness of the method.