Cascading failures of power grids caused by line breakdown

Abstract

Summary In recent years, several large blackouts have drawn much attention to security problems in electric power transmission systems all over the world, which were triggered by initial minor disturbances and caused by cascading failures. Many models for cascading failures in power grids based on node attacks have been proposed, where only one kind of load is involved. In real power systems, however, strict measures are normally taken to protect the nodes, i.e. the power stations, so that failures at the nodes can hardly occur. It is much easier for transmission lines to break down, which may lead to cascading failures in entire power systems. Hence, a new model involving active and reactive loads and considering transmission line failures instead of node failures is proposed to understand cascading failures of power grids. When a transmission line breaks down, its load is redistributed to its neighbouring lines according to their respective capacities. It is well known that a power grid's topology and connectivity play a key role in determining its dynamic behaviour. Therefore, cascading failures of power grids with typical topologies, i.e. random, small‐world and scale‐free networks, are investigated using the model proposed and considering transmission line breakdowns. Finally, the model's effectiveness is validated employing real data of the European power grid. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Optimal Deception Strategies in Power System Fortification against Deliberate Attacks

“…Based on the DCPF model, constraint (11) establishes the power flow for branches, where coefficients (1 − x l − z l ) are guaranteed to be nonnegative due to constraints (8). Constraints (12), (13), and (14) enforce the limits for line flow, generation, and power surplus/deficit, respectively.…”

Modeling and Fault Propagation Analysis of Cyber–Physical Power System

“…By adding the operational features of an electric network to form the temporal information of the network, a cascading faults graph is proposed to reveal the mechanism of fault propagation [18]. Taking active and reactive loads into consideration, a model is devised to balance the loads between edges connected with the same node for preventing the occurrence of cascading failures [19]. Nevertheless, the above approaches based on the complex network theory merely analyze the failures of power networks, and furthermore, ignore the influence of the cyber networks.…”

Modeling of unbalanced three‐phase driving‐point impedance with application to control of grid‐connected power converters

“…Three-phase unbalanced conditions are readily observed in a microgrid system [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] that incurs loss and potentially leads to stability issues [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Three-phase unbalanced conditions are readily observed in a microgrid system [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] that incurs loss and potentially leads to stability issues [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

“…Microgrids are the key components of the future smart grids, which accommodate distributed generation (DG) and dynamically connected and disconnected loads in either grid-connected or islanded operation mode. Three-phase unbalanced conditions are readily observed in a microgrid system [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] that incurs loss and potentially leads to stability issues [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”