An artificial neural network model supported with multi criteria decision making approaches for maintenance planning in hydroelectric power plants

Power plants are the large-scale production facilities with the main purpose of realizing uninterrupted, reliable, efficient, economic and environmentally friendly energy generation. Maintenance is one of the critical factors in achieving these comprehensive goals, which are called as sustainable energy supply. The maintenance processes carried out in order to ensure sustainable energy supply in the power plants should be managed due to the costs arising from time requirement, the use of material and labor, and the loss of generation. In this respect, it is critical that the fault dates are forecasted, and maintenance is performed without failure in power plants consisting of thousands of equipment. In this context in this study, the maintenance planning problem for equipment with high criticality level is handled in one of the large-scale hydroelectric power plants that meet the quintile of Turkey’s energy demand as of the end of 2018. In the first stage, the evaluation criteria determined by the power plant experts are weighted by the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is an accepted method in the literature, in order to determine the criticality levels of the equipment in terms of power plant at the next stage. In order to obtain the final priority ranking of the equipment in terms of power plant within the scope of these weights, Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used because of its advantages compared to other outranking algorithms. As a result of this solution, for the 14 main equipment groups with the highest criticality level determined on the basis of the power plant, periods between two breakdowns are estimated, and maintenance planning is performed based on these periods. In the estimation phase, an artificial neural network (ANN) model has been established by using 11-years fault data for selected equipment groups and the probable fault dates are estimated by considering a production facility as a system without considering the sector for the first time in the literature. With the plan including the maintenance activities that will be carried out before the determined breakdown dates, increasing the generation efficiency, extending the economic life of the power plant, minimizing the generation costs, maximizing the plant availability rate and maximizing profit are aimed. The maintenance plan is implemented for 2 years in the power plant and the unit shutdowns resulting from the selected equipm