Impact assessment of communication service disruptions in power system applications

The communication system is the key element in an electric power system that supports its observability and controllability. Communication failures pose serious risks in electric power system operations. It is therefore crucial to study the adverse effects of communication system failures on power system operation. This is especially for wide-area monitoring, control and protection applications where rapid corrective actions are taken to prevent cascading failures. In this paper, a framework to evaluate the role of communication services on wide-area power system operation is proposed. A case study based on real-world power and communication systems is used to demonstrate usefulness of the proposed framework.