The invention discloses a multi-substation equipment operation maintenance optimization method. On the basis of a multi-dimensional pheromone method, the multi-substation equipment operation maintenance optimization method provides an equipment operation maintenance model based on the multi-dimensional pheromones of defect distribution input, outage time distribution input, operation maintenance effect quantification input and operation maintenance workload quantification input of substation equipment; on the basis of the iterative application of the genetic algorithm and the particle swarm algorithm, with the overall reliability of multiple substations as a target function and operation maintenance cost as a constraint condition, the multi-substation equipment operation maintenance optimization method determines a comprehensive maintenance weight of the substations, and obtains an optimal operation maintenance scheme on the substations. Since the multi-substation equipment operation maintenance optimization method is combined with the genetic algorithm and the particle swarm algorithm to determine the comprehensive maintenance weight of the substations and adopts iterative comprehensive optimization in which wide-range optimization is implemented by the particle swarm algorithm and local optimization is implemented by the genetic algorithm, the respective search optimization characteristics of the algorithms are fully utilized, local optimum is prevented, and the optimal overall reliability of the substations under an operation maintenance team workload constraint condition can be realized.