Toward Preventing Cascading Blackouts: Vulnerability and Criticality Stress Metrics

Preventing blackouts.

Complex Systems Analysis of Series of Blackouts: Cascading Failure, Criticality, and Self-organization

We give a comprehensive account of a complex systems approach to large blackouts caused by cascading failure. Instead of looking at the details of particular blackouts, we study the statistics, dynamics and risk of series of blackouts with approximate global models. North American blackout data suggests that the frequency of large blackouts is governed by a power law. This result is consistent ...

Examining Criticality of Blackouts in Power System Models with Cascading Events

As power system loading increases, larger blackouts due to cascading outages become more likely. We investigate a critical loading at which the average size of blackouts increases sharply to examine whether the probability distribution of blackout sizes shows the power tails observed in real blackout data. Three different models are used, including two simulations of cascading outages in electr...

Advanced fault diagnosis techniques and their role in preventing cascading blackouts

Advanced Fault Diagnosis Techniques and Their Role in Preventing Cascading Blackouts. (December 2006) Nan Zhang, B.S., Tsinghua University, China; M.S., Tsinghua University, China Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Mladen Kezunovic This dissertation studied new transmission line fault diagnosis approaches using new technologies and proposed a scheme to apply those techniques in preventing and mit...

Cascading Network Failure in Power Grid Blackouts

Cascading failure consists of complicated sequences of dependent failures and can cause large blackouts. The emerging risk analysis, simulation, and modeling of cascading blackouts are briefly surveyed, and key references are suggested.