Generating unit maintenance scheduling in power market based on fairness and competition

In restructured power systems, the traditional approach to unit maintenance scheduling (UMS) is required to have major changes in order to be compatible with competitive environment structures. In this paper a new approach to unit maintenance scheduling in competitive electricity markets is presented. The main part of this study is both how to treat generating companies (GenCos) fairly and how to guarantee the power system security during the maintenance scheduling. This paper advances the unit maintenance scheduling in the electricity market, so can determine `which maintenance plans to be selected' while can guarantee the power system security and ensure a fair competition among GenCos. The main contribution of this study can be focused on constructing a new kind of UMS to prevent from market power. In order to guarantee the power system security, a probabilistic approach of reliability analysis is presented. This probabilistic methodology is designed as the health levelisation and wellbeing analysis technique. The optimal strategy profile is defined by the Genetic Algorithm so can strike the right balance between profit and security with fair competition. Finally, simulation result on nine-GenCo IEEE reliability test system (IEEE-RTS) is applied to show the applicability of the proposed framework.