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Sensitivity analysis of the power grid vulnerability to large-scale cascading failures

Published: 04 January 2012 Publication History

Abstract

This paper revisits models of cascading failures in the transmission system of the power grid. It has been recently shownthat since power flows are governed by the laws of physics,these models significantly differ from epidemic/percolationbased models. Yet, while some numerical results have been recently obtained based on these models, there is a need to investigate the sensitivity of the results to various parameters and to evaluate the models' accuracy. In this paper, through numerical experiments with real grid data, we study the effects of geographically correlated outages and the resulting cascades. We consider a wide range of parameters, such as the power lines' Factor of Safety and the sensitivity of the lines to power flow spikes. Moreover, we compare our numerical results to the actual events in a recent blackout in the San Diego area (Sept. 2011), thereby demonstrating that the model's predictions are consistent with real events.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review
ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review  Volume 40, Issue 3
December 2012
108 pages
ISSN:0163-5999
DOI:10.1145/2425248
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 January 2012
Published in SIGMETRICS Volume 40, Issue 3

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Author Tags

  1. cascading failures
  2. geographically-correlated failures
  3. power grid
  4. resilience
  5. survivability

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