Study on structural vulnerabilities of power grids based on the electrical distance

To ensure reliable and secure operation of today´s large scale interconnected power systems, one of the most basic parts is to have a reasonable transmission infrastructure. Currently, the applications of complex networks theory on power grids are mostly based on the topological structure, while it fails to capture the electrical characteristics of power systems. In this paper, a grid modeling method is proposed which can be used to establish the graph models of power grids based on the concept of electrical distance. Then with the complex network theory, some statistical properties of these models could be analyzed, and the parameters such as Degree, Degree Distribution, Hub nodes and Clustering properties which play key roles in the evaluation of network structure can be studied and compared with the results based on the topological structure of IEEE-118-bus and IEEE-300-bus test systems. Finally the spectral clustering method is applied for partitioning of power grid and locating vulnerable interfaces.