Failure Influence Index for Power Transmission Systems

Power Transmission Networks (PTNs) are contributing to the economic growth of many countries. The progression and reliability of the PTN is robust in most of the developed countries. However, pervasive disturbances, such as lightning strikes, ice storms, equipment failure, short-circuit resulting from untrimmed trees, excessive customer-load demand, and unusual operating conditions are severely affecting power systems. Cascading failure is a usual mechanism that can propagate through the network to cause massive blackouts in the PTNs. Therefore, prediction and avoidance of blackouts is essential and must be addressed. The Complex Network Theory (CNT) captures the salient features of the networks that are beneficial in defining a model to study local and global dynamics of the blackouts. This paper proposes the Failure Influence Index (FI²) to calculate the effect of cascade failures in the PTNs by incorporating the concepts of CNT and electrical parameters, such as Alternating Current (AC) power flow. The FI² is tested and validated on the IEEE 30 bus, IEEE 118 bus, and IEEE 300 bus systems. The FI² shows promising results on the above-mentioned IEEE bus systems and can be a key feature in defining a comprehensive predictive model to study the blackouts.