Cost Effective Integrated Maintenance Scheduling in Power Systems using Ant Lion Optimizer

Integrated system preventive maintenance is an exigent job in both regulated as well as deregulated utility systems that must be carried over by the utilities in order to extend their continuation and performance. The generator maintenance scheduling is commonly focused, but the line flow limits in the transmission lines, which are connected to the generating units may violate due to the outages. Thus, maintenance planning of generators and transmission lines has become indispensable and the Integrated Maintenance Scheduling (IMS) addresses alike. Inclusion of transmission lines and line flow constraints in generating unit maintenance will increase intricacy of the problem that enforces IMS for secure and economic operations. As an efficient optimization tool is necessary, the modern bio inspired algorithm, Ant Lion Optimizer (ALO) has been intended for the first time to address the IMS problem. The well-known / standard test systems are used for demonstration and the attained numerical results by simulation are compared with other meta-heuristic methods. The comparison reveals that the ALO is a positive choice for solving IMS problems. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.