Abstract: This paper illustrates use of particle swarm optimization technique for effective and optimal maintenance scheduling of generating units ensuring economical and reliable operation of power system. Initially problems associated with the generator maintenance scheduling in modern power systems are illustrated, also explaining the need and importance of generator maintenance. It briefly describes the maintenance scheduling of generating units by application of PSO technique. This paper proposes a particle swarm optimization algorithm satisfying the system load demand and crew constraints. This technique converges to the optimal solution where most analytical methods fail to converge by generating schedules with high system reliability indices which can be represented by generation, crew, fitness and reliability plots.

Keywords: Generator maintenance schedule (GMS), optimization, personal best (pbest), global best (gbest), Particle swarm optimization (PSO) Technique and System reliability.