TABLE OF CONTENTS The National Grid Company plc is responsible for the maintenance of the high voltage electricity transmission network in England and Wales. It must plan maintenance so as to minimise costs taking into account:
location and size of demand,
generator capacities and availabilities,
electricity carrying capacity of the remainder of the network, i.e. that part not undergoing maintenance.
Previous work showed the combination of a genetic algorithm using an order or permutation chromosome combined with hand coded greedy optimisers can readily produce an optimal schedule for a four node test problem [10]. Following this the same GA has been used to find low cost schedules for the South Wales region of the UK high voltage power network.
This paper describes the evolution of the best known schedule for the base South Wales problem using genetic programming starting from the hand coded heuristics used with the GA.
In England and Wales electrical power is transmitted by a high voltage electricity transmission network which is highly interconnected and carries large power flows. It is owned and operated by the National Grid Company plc (NGC) who maintain it and wish to ensure its maintenance is performed at least cost, consistent with plant safety and security of supply.
There are many components in the cost of planned maintenance. The largest is the cost of replacement electricity generation, which occurs when maintenance of the network prevents a cheap generator from running so requiring a more expensive...
