Power system maintenance planning using value function approximation

Power system maintenance planning is vital for conducting maintenance of power system equipment in an optimal manner. A maintenance model of a system with number of equipment has several states. Solving such a system model would be computationally intractable. This paper investigates the possibility of conducting system level maintenance planning by using a component specific Markov decision process (MDP) model developed for maintenance of equipment. In order to find optimal actions for the system, a value function is approximated using component specific MDP models. In a case study, the optimal actions obtained using the value function approximation (VFA) method are verified by comparing them with the optimal actions obtained using an MDP model developed for the full system.