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arXiv · 2007.06967

Emergence of scale-free blackout sizes in power grids

Tommaso Nesti·Fiona Sloothaak·Bert Zwart
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Abstract

We model power grids as graphs with heavy-tailed sinks, which represent demand from cities, and study cascading failures on such graphs. Our analysis links the scale-free nature of blackout sizes to the scale-free nature of city sizes, contrasting previous studies suggesting that this nature is governed by self-organized criticality. Our results are based on a new mathematical framework combining the physics of power flow with rare event analysis for heavy-tailed distributions, and are validated using various synthetic networks and the German transmission grid.

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Tommaso Nesti, Fiona Sloothaak, Bert Zwart. 2020-07-14. Emergence of scale-free blackout sizes in power grids. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.125.058301

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