Modeling and analysis of the impact of failures in Electric Power Systems organized in interconnected regions

Abstract

Analysis of interdependencies in Electric Power Systems (EPS) has been recognized as a crucial and challenging issue to improve their trustworthiness. The recent liberalization process in energy markets has promoted the entry of a variety of operators in the electricity industry. The resulting new organization contributed to increase in complexity, heterogeneity and interconnection. This paper proposes a framework for analyzing EPS organized as a set of interconnected regions, both from the point of view of the electric power grid and of the cyber control infrastructure. The emphasis is on interdependencies and in assessing their impact on indicators representative of the QoS perceived by users. Taking a reference power grid as test case, the effects of failures on selected measures are shown, both in case the grid is partitioned in a number of regions and in case of a single region, to illustrate the behavior of different grid and control configurations.

Analysis of Electric Power Systems Accounting for Interdependencies in Heterogeneous Scenarios

“…Recently, this initial proposal has been refined and extended to cope with EPS organized in a set of interconnected regions [5]. Since the version we adopted in the current paper is the multi-region one, in the following we briefly recall the major elements and failure/propagation dynamics involved in such framework, regarding both EI and ITCS.…”

“…Details on the algorithms implemented by RS 1 () and RS 2 () are in [5], where a few cost functions the LP problem is based on are also described. Typically, RS 1 () is based on the grid configuration immediately before the occurrence of the disruption and RS 2 () is based on the nominal grid configuration, the initial configuration at time 0 (e.g.…”

“…Therefore, this paper intends to advance on previous studies by showing the usability of the framework in real case scenarios, since modern electric power grids and control are, in practice, characterized by elements with different degrees of criticality. Although the EPS modeling and analysis framework exploited in this work is basically the same as in [5], still its application to heterogeneous scenarios has required some refinements to it, especially in terms of the reconfiguration policies.…”

“…In the context of this project, an innovative, modular EPS modeling approach, that considers separately the two constituting infrastructures, but takes into account their interdependencies and allows to assess the impact of reciprocal failures, has been developed by the authors of this paper [2]- [4]. Recently, this framework, which was limited to a single region of the transmission grid, was extended to account for more realistic power grid organizations, structured as a set of interconnected regions [5]. Although it has been developed as much as possible in a parametric and general form, so as to be able to account for a variety of real EPS scenarios, the applications of the modeling framework have been limited to homogeneous scenarios, from the point of view of the entities of the power grid.…”

Model-Based Evaluation of the Impact of Attacks to the Telecommunication Service of the Electrical Grid

“…A model-based approach is chosen, due to its high flexibility in exploring a wide range of alternatives at a limited cost and in representing at different abstraction levels the various layers of the EPS hierarchy (e.g. transmission versus distribution, local versus regional and multiregional as proposed for example in (Beccuti, Chiaradonna, Di Giandomenico, Donatelli, Dondossola & Franceschinis, 2012), (Chiaradonna, Lollini & Di Giandomenico, 2007) and (Chiaradonna, Giandomenico & Nostro, 2011).…”