Cascading failure analysis of bulk power system using small-world network model

Analysis in this paper is focus on initial probing the mechanism of cascading failures happened in bulk power system using small-world network model. Comparison of the north part of the Chinese national grid and the west state power grid in U.S. shows that the Chinese power gird is also a small-world. Then the achievements in collective dynamics of small-world networks are used to advance the analysis of cascading failure in power systems. We firstly analyze node failure and line breakdown respectively, and then proposed a Monte-Carlo simulation process to search root causes of cascading failure of Northern Chinese Power Grid. Simulation results show that cascading failure is high correlation to the statistical characters of these networks, especially the degree of the initial attack points and the character shortest path length of the restructured network after each step of components out of service, which are critical nodes and critical lines of the network. Historical statistical data of Chinese power system also shows similar rule of the existence of critical points in the networks.