Blackout

About: Blackout is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2088 publications have been published within this topic receiving 30433 citations.

A Security Risk Assessment System of Complicated Power Grid Based on Multiple Factor Analysis

Abstract: Based on multiple factor analysis of large area blackout accidents and by use of fault tree analysis and analytic hierarchy process(AHP),a security risk assessment system,which is objective,practicable and applicable for complicated power grid,is established.This assessment system can fully bring government departments' management advantages in overall planning,coordination and organization of social resources as well as technical superiority of electric power enterprises in secure and stable operation of power grids into play,thereby the security risk of power grids can be all-sidedly reduced to prevent the occurrence of large area blackout accidents.Practical assessment of a certain provincial power grid in China is performed by this assessment system,and the risk level of large area blackout of this power grid is obtained.The feasibility of the proposed risk assessment method and that of its assessment indices are verified by assessment results.

The characteristics and main causes of power system failures basing on the analysis of previous blackouts in the world

Abstract: The major purpose of power system is to ensure continuous and infallible power supply. In the face of real threat of widespread power system failures which affected numerous power systems, there is a necessity of preparing projects for power system defense and restoration. The defense of power system considers the possibility of failure dodging and, in the case of its occurrence, the limitation of failure range and consequently, return to normal conditions. In turn, successful restoration of power system is connected with generation capacity reconstruction and in the result, power supply of the final consignees. The imminence of power system failures stems from its various triggers, such as atmospheric phenomena, human factors and technical malfunctions thus widespread catastrophic failures of power system constitute a real threat not only to electrical power system, but also to widely understood safety. The development of system failure is a cascading process that is highly sensitive to disturbances in the performance of the power system. The paper contains a review with a statistical analysis of recent large power system failures with particular attention to major blackout causes. The paper also delineates cascading nature of power system failures by indicating the failure stages on the examples of the large blackouts in power systems.

Mining complex power networks for blackout prevention

Abstract: Following the recent devastating blackouts in North America, UK and Italy, blackout prevention has attracted significant attention, though it is known as a notoriously difficult task. To prevent the blackout, it is essential to accurately predict the instable status of power network components. In the large-scale power network however, existing analysis tools fail to perform accurate and in-time prediction of component instability, because of the sophisticated structure of real-world power networks and the huge amount of system variables to be analyzed. To prevent the blackout, we need an accurate and efficient method that (a) can discover interesting features and patterns relevant to the blackout, from the highly complex structure and ten thousands of system variables of a power network, and (b) can give accurate and fast prediction of system instability whenever required, so that the network operator can take necessary actions in time. In this paper, we report our tool developed for power network instability prediction. The proposed method consists of two major stages. In the first stage,a novel type of patterns namely Local Correlation Network Pattern (LCNP) is mined from the structure and system variables of the power network. Correlation rules, which are useful for the network operator to locate potentially instable components, can be further generated from the LCNP. In the second stage, a kernel based network classification method is developed to predict the system instability. By testing on a real world power network (the New England system), we demonstrate that the proposed tool is effective in predicting system instability and thus highly useful for blackout prevention.

Integration of renewable distributed generation with storage and demand side load management in rural islanded microgrid

Abstract: The integration between distributed generations, storage, and load for islanded microgrids located in rural areas of developing countries offer serious challenges. The rural microgrid, catering the energy needs of rural communities, has no access to modern information and communication amenities like internet, communication architectures, and backup power. The lack of information and communication technologies (ICT) and backup power sources in rural microgrid lead to uncontrolled load consumption and inefficient storage dispatch resulting in system-wide outages. This paper proposes a novel approach to overcome challenges such as affordability and accessibility. A proactive load controlling and prioritized smart load curtailment is proposed in real time using local system parameters and human activities. The objective is to reduce blackouts and ensure maximum load supply without using conventional backup sources, computational forecasting, scheduling tools, and sophisticated communication architectures. The fuzzy logic controller is proposed to proactively decide for a percentage of load to be curtailed. Human Activities Tracking System (HATS) for smart load curtailment is used for balanced and efficient integration between the distributed generation, storage, and load. Four system parameters, storage drain time, state of charge (SoC), running load, and solar irradiations, are used as input to the fuzzy controller. HATS controller is used to smartly prioritize the load curtailment based on human occupancy in different buildings. Human activities are monitored using pyroelectric sensors installed at the entrance of different buildings. The performance of the system has been assessed while comparing the proposed methodology, the SoC controlling method (SCM). While using the proposed methodology, the blackout was drastically reduced to 96 to 100%. State of charge depletion rate was considerably less than conventional methods.