Toward an Integrated Approach of HV and MV Circuit-Breakers Optimization Maintenance Planning and Reliability Assessment: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper investigates technical and organizational tools to improve maintenance planning performances. Indeed, maintaining a high level of reliability and availability of a Medium Voltage electrical network protection system such as the Medium Voltage and High Voltage circuit-breaker and its numerical protection relay at a low operating expenses cost is one of the most critical and challenging tasks for MV electrical distribution network operators. This work has mainly two goals. Firstly, to propose an operating expenses budget function that evaluates the Planned Scheduled Preventive Maintenance Policy combined with a Condition-based maintenance fora real series-parallel multi-assets MV electrical distribution system with active redundancy under the reliability and the maintenance frequency visits of these components. Secondly, to implement an integrated genetic algorithm approach in order to look for the optimal perfect and planned preventive maintenance scheduling policy and condition-based maintenance that minimizes the maximum operating expenses cost of the entire system.The method determines the optimal schedule of preventive maintenance actions based on minimization both reliabilty and operating expenses costs. Conclusions and recommendations for practice are made on the basis of obtained results.