Marianna Vaiman

Abstract:
Interconnected power grids throughout the world are very reliable but occasionally suffer massive blackouts with multibillion dollar costs to society. Cascading failures present severe threats to power grid reliability, and thus reducing their likelihood, mitigation and prevention is of significant importance. This paper is one in a series presented by Cascading Failures Task Force, under the IEEE PES Computer Analytical Methods Subcommittee (CAMS) with primary focus on mitigation and prevention of cascading outages. The paper presents the basic methodologies for mitigation, summarizes currently deployed special protection schemes, and lists cases of successful and unsuccessful mitigation of cascading outages and lessons learned. Future developments and challenges in the area of mitigating cascading outages are also discussed.

Abstract:
Cascading outages can cause large blackouts, and a variety of methods are emerging to study this challenging topic. The Task Force on Understanding, Prediction, Mitigation, and Restoration of Cascading Failures, under the IEEE PES Computer Analytical Methods Subcommittee (CAMS), seeks to consolidate and review the progress of the field towards methods and tools of assessing the risk of cascading failure. This paper discusses the challenges of cascading failure and summarizes a variety of state-of-the-art analysis and simulation methods, including analyzing observed data, and simulations relying on various probabilistic, deterministic, approximate, and heuristic approaches. Limitations to the interpretation and application of analytical results are highlighted, and directions and challenges for future developments are discussed.