Modeling Cascading Failure in Power Systems from a Network Perspective

This talk will focus on a network approach to model and analyze cascading failures in power systems. Historical data of blackouts in North America (1996 and 2003) provide real failure propagation profiles which contain some stereotypical features. Our network-based model, combining a deterministic physical model for power flow simulation and stochastic methods for estimating failure dynamics, is able to reproduce cascading failure dynamics that capture key features of realistic blackouts. The 2016 Ukranian blackout, however, was confirmed to have been triggered by cyber attacks. It is thus highly relevant to consider a cybercoupled power system model, which can be conveniently obtained from extending the network-based model, resulting in an effective simulation model that can be used to capture key features of the dynamics of failure propagation in cyber-coupled power systems.