Cross-Entropy Based Rare-Event Simulation for the Identification of Dangerous Events in Power Systems

We propose in this paper a novel approach for identifying rare events that may endanger power system integrity. This approach is inspired by the rare-event simulation literature and, in particular, by the cross-entropy (CE) method for rare- event simulation. We propose a general framework for exploiting the CE method in the context of power system reliability evaluation, when a severity function defined on the set of possible events is available. The approach is illustrated on the IEEE 30 bus test system when instability mechanisms related to static voltage security are considered.