Blackout Model Based on OPF and its Self-organized Criticality

Based on the essence of self-organized criticality and optimal power flow (OPF), this paper develops a model to capture the cascading failures and blackouts in power systems, which avoids some shortcomings of existent blackout models. The proposed model contains two dynamics, one is the fast dynamics which simulates the serial blackouts in power system, and the other is the slow dynamics which reflects the growth of the power system. Simulations in IEEE-30 bus system with the proposed model show that, the processing of the cascading and blackout can be captured by the fast dynamics, together with the self-organized criticality property of fast dynamic respect to the micro-scale. Besides, the macro-scale of self-organized criticality of power system can be revealed from the viewpoint of total load demand vs. the total network transfer capability. Furthermore, improving the transmission ability of network could effectively prevent blackout and reduce its risk.