Cascading failures in power grids

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Abstract
This paper focuses on cascading line failures in the transmission system of the power grid. Recent large-scale power outages demonstrated the limitations of percolation- and epidemic-based tools in modeling cascades. Hence, we study cascades by using computational tools and a linearized power flow model. We first obtain results regarding the Moore-Penrose pseudo-inverse of the power grid admittance matrix. Based on these results, we study the impact of a single line failure on the flows on other lines. We also illustrate via simulation the impact of the distance and resistance distance on the flow increase following a failure, and discuss the difference from the epidemic models. We use the pseudo-inverse of admittance matrix to develop an efficient algorithm to identify the cascading failure evolution, which can be a building block for cascade mitigation. Finally, we show that finding the set of lines whose removal results in the minimum yield (the fraction of demand satisfied after the cascade) is NP-Hard and introduce a simple heuristic for finding such a set. Overall, the results demonstrate that using the resistance distance and the pseudo-inverse of admittance matrix provides important insights and can support the development of efficient algorithms.
Funding Information
  • Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC-0812072, CNS-1018379, HDTRA1-13-1-0021)
  • Division of Computer and Network Systems (EEC-0812072, CNS-1018379, HDTRA1-13-1-0021)
  • European Research Council (EEC-0812072, CNS-1018379, HDTRA1-13-1-0021)

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