A Hybrid Model to Optimize the Maintenance Policies in the Hydroelectric Power Plants

Abstract

The main goal of power plants is to generate the electricity in sustainability perspective consisting of the principles of environmental awareness, reliability, efficiency, economy and uninterruptedness. Complying with the operational directives and maintenance are twin pillars for achieving this comprehensive goal. Within this scope, this study handles the maintenance strategy selection problem which is the first step of the effective maintenance management for one of the most important equipment groups among thousands of equipment in one of the large-scale hydroelectric power plants which have great importance for Turkey energy mix with approximately a fifth share in the total generation. So as to determine the most critical equipment group AHP-TOPSIS combination is used. For the selected equipment group, the most appropriate of all applicable 4 maintenance strategies are determined via PROMETHEE, which has been limited used for the maintenance strategy selection problem in the literature despite its advantages. As a result of this study which is the first in the literature with its method configuration and its application in hydroelectric power plants, a 1-year observation is conducted to confirm the proposed approach, and a 100% improvement is achieved in the unit shutdowns resulting from the selected equipment.