Scheduling Outages in Transmission Networks via Genetic Algorithms

The evaluation process of requested outages in power grids comprises a harmonious adjustment of maintenance needs placed by market participants, in which priorities and operational constraints are taken into account. It is a critical process for independent system operators (ISOs) since they have to handle a huge amount of transactions, without affecting system reliability and market prices. This paper presents a methodology for the evaluation of requested outages, viewed as a constrained optimization problem due to its combinatorial nature. A genetic algorithm in which problem variables are encoded using the Gray code is adopted to obtain high quality solutions. Simulation results with the IEEE 14 and IEEE 30 bus test systems are presented to illustrate the proposed methodology.