A Probabilistic Indicator of System Stress

Criticality in a cascading failure blackout model

“…In terms of the temperature analogy discussed in the introduction, determining the proximity to the critical loading is akin to measuring temperature to determine the proximity to boiling. The emerging methods to make these bulk statistical measurements include the correlated sampling Monte Carlo methods in [12] and the measurement of average propagation of failures in a branching process approximation suggested in [8].…”

“…The Manchester model used in this paper was designed to provide a realistic representation of the behavior of a power system when subjected to disturbances [14,12]. For example, the Manchester model represents various adjustments that are made by automatic control systems and operators when trying to return the system to a stable operating condition.…”

“…The Manchester model has been exhaustively tested on a 53-bus system [14] and on the large power system used in this paper [12].…”

“…It is important to verify and compare criticality in a variety of power system blackout models to find out the extent to which it is a phenomenon universally associated with cascading failure of power systems. Models of cascading failure in power systems are described in [14,12,1,10,5,13].…”

Estimating Cascading Failure Risk With Random Chemistry

“…A smaller number of papers have adapted sampling techniques to the problem of cascading failure risk estimation [11], [18]. In doing so, some have used variance reduction techniques to reduce the computational effort [19]- [22], which led to a speedup factor of 5-10 in [19], and 2-4 in [22]. Non-sampling approaches, such as branching process models [23], [24], can provide efficient estimates of risk, but abstract away some details, such as the ability to compute the relative contributions of particular outages to overall risk.…”