Resource allocation and maintenance scheduling for distributed multi-center renewable energy systems considering dynamic scope division

Abstract

The continuity of activity and competition in the global renewable energy market has driven manufacturers to shift from centralized to decentralized structures and to develop multi-center service networks. Appropriate and timely preventive maintenance (PM) is essential for reducing the operation and maintenance (O&M) costs and promoting long-term stable operation for the equipment of distributed renewable energy systems. Traditionally, decision-makers separated the service network into regions and established regional centers for services. However, due to the dynamic characteristics of equipment degradation, the O&M requirement has shifted in real-time. This is an ambitious and challenging O&M task, which requires considering many aspects, including the equipment failure rate, the availability of maintenance resources, the variability of PM requirements, and the long-term horizons of renewable energy system operations. In this paper, we develop a novel multi-center collaborative maintenance (MCM) strategy to solve this resource allocation and maintenance scheduling problem (RAMSP). And a hybrid solution approach is developed by decomposing the original problem and solving two subproblems sequentially. Numerical examples are used to illustrate the economic and computational advantages of the proposed maintenance framework. By effectively integrating the computational efficiency of hierarchical modeling and the quality benefit of holistic modeling, the proposed MCM strategy emphasizes 13% average cost saving and 70% average computation time reduction. The cyclic maintenance schemes with minimal total O&M service cost are obtained to support the system's proper operation, maintenance resource management, and service route optimization.