Ant Colont Optimization for Power Plant Maintenance Scheduling Optimization

Wai Kuan Foong

In this paper, a formulation that enables ant colony optimization (ACO) 
algorithms to be applied to the power plant maintenance scheduling 
optimization (PPMSO) problem is developed and tested on a 21-unit case study. 
A heuristic formulation is introduced and its effectiveness in solving the 
problem is investigated. The results obtained indicate that the performance of 
ACO algorithms is significantly better than that of a number of other 
metaheuristics, such as genetic algorithms and simulated annealing, which have 
been applied to the same case study previously.