Implementation of Reliability-Centered Maintenance for transmission components using Particle Swarm Optimization

In a deregulated power industry, a maintenance strategy is of critical importance for transmission systems composed of aging components. Such a strategy can provide significant cost savings by optimizing maintenance decisions for power system operation. This paper presents a Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) model for developing a maintenance strategy in a transmission system. This model is applicable to transmission components whose degradation can be classified according to the severity of the aging. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is used to extract the optimal RCM strategy from a large class of possible maintenance scenarios. A numerical example shows that a maintenance strategy based on the proposed RCM model is more cost-efficient than traditional maintenance strategies.