This paper presents a new approach for solving the problem of maintenance scheduling of generating units using a binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO). In this paper, we find the optimal solution of the maintenance scheduling of generating units within a specific time horizon using a binary particle swarm optimization algorithm, which is the discrete version of a conventional particle swarm optimization. It is shown that the BPSO method proposed in this paper is effective in obtaining feasible solutions in the maintenance scheduling of generating unit. IEEE reliability test systems(1996) including 32-generators are selected as a sample system for the application of the proposed algorithm. From the result, we can conclude that the BPSO can find the optimal solution of the maintenance scheduling of the generating unit with the desirable degree of accuracy and computation time, compared to other heuristic search algorithm such as genetic algorithms. It is also envisaged that BPSO can be easily implemented for similar optimizations and scheduling problems in power system problems to obtain better solutions and improve convergence performance.