Generation maintenance scheduling based on multiple objectives and their relationship analysis

In a market environment of power systems, each producer pursues its maximal profit while the independent system operator is in charge of the system reliability and the minimization of the total generation cost when generating the generation maintenance scheduling (GMS). Thus, the GMS is inherently a multi-objective optimization problem as its objectives usually conflict with each other. This paper proposes a multi-objective GMS model in a market environment which includes three types of objectives, i.e., each producer’s profit, the system reliability, and the total generation cost. The GMS model has been solved by the group search optimizer with multiple producers (GSOMP) on two test systems. The simulation results show that the model is well solved by the GSOMP with a set of evenly distributed Pareto-optimal solutions obtained. The simulation results also illustrate that one producer’s profit conflicts with another one’s, that the total generation cost does not conflict with the profit of the producer possessing the cheapest units while the total generation cost conflicts with the other producers’ profits, and that the reliability objective conflicts with the other objectives.