A New Method For Identification of Critical Lines With The Potential For Triggering Cascading Failures In Power Grids

Blackouts are among the main threats to the security of electric power systems. Cascading failures are known as the most important agent for creating blackouts. Transmission lines are the basic equipment of power networks that their outage can make subsequent cascading outages. In this paper, based on the application of decision tree a new approach is proposed for online identification of critical lines with the potential for triggering cascading failure. Trained decision tree is able to estimate brittleness of network and according to that, the operator will be able to change operating conditions. For this purpose, at the first step, with the introduction of appropriate indicators and according to the associated blackout in a wide range of conditions including load level, load-generation patterns and network structures, required data for decision tree are prepared. Next, with training decision tree, an algorithm for identification of critical lines and network brittleness for propagating blackout is proposed. To implement the proposed approach, The New England 39-bus test system is employed