Risk assessment of cascading outages: Part I — Overview of methodologies

Abstract

This paper is a result of ongoing activity carried out by Understanding, Prediction, Mitigation and Restoration of Cascading Failures Task Force under IEEE ComputerAnalytical Methods Subcommittee (CAMS). The task force's previous papers are focused on general aspects of cascading outages such as understanding, prediction, prevention and restoration from cascading failures. This is the first of two new papers, which extend this previous work to summarize the state of the art in cascading failure risk analysis methodologies and modeling tools. This paper is intended to be a reference document to summarize the state of the art in the methodologies for performing risk assessment of cascading outages caused by some initiating event(s). A risk assessment should cover the entire potential chain of cascades starting with the initiating event(s) and ending with some final condition(s). However, this is a difficult task and heuristic approaches and approximations have been suggested. This paper discusses different approaches to this and suggests directions for future development of methodologies. The second paper summarizes the state of the art in modeling tools for risk assessment of cascading outages.

An entropy-based metric to quantify the robustness of power grids against cascading failures

“…lightning, natural disasters, contact between vegetation and conductors and human error) [3,25]. In a scenario of cascading failures due to line overloads, failure of any single transmission line changes the balance of power flow and leads to a global redistribution of flows across the grid.…”

Development of a Simulation Framework for Analyzing Security of Supply in Integrated Gas and Electric Power Systems

“…Cascading effects of contingencies in the power grid are very complex phenomenona, and identifying the typical mechanisms of cascading failures and understanding how these mechanisms interact during blackouts is an important research area [58][59][60][61][62][63]. Potential mechanisms that might be modeled include overloaded line tripping by impedance relays due to the low voltage and high current operating conditions, line tripping due to loss of synchronism, the undesirable generator tripping events by overexcitation protection, generator tripping due to abnormal voltage and frequency system condition, and under-frequency or under-voltage load shedding.…”

A Comparison of Malicious Interdiction Strategies Against Electrical Networks

“…There is also an established body of literature on the risk analysis of accidental cascading failure in power systems, of which the IEEE Cascading Failure Working Group have produced a number of authoritative surveys [5], [61], [62]. The state of the art here is sophisticated [63]: modern simulation tools e.g [64] can simulate many of the dynamics underlying cascading failures with impressive granularity.…”