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Emergence of Scale-Free Blackout Sizes in Power Grids

Tommaso Nesti, Fiona Sloothaak, and Bert Zwart
Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 058301 – Published 31 July 2020
Physics logo See Focus story: City Sizes May Affect Blackout Probabilities
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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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  • Received 12 September 2019
  • Revised 7 June 2020
  • Accepted 10 July 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.058301

© 2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

NetworksStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

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City Sizes May Affect Blackout Probabilities

Published 31 July 2020

The probabilities of electricity blackouts may be influenced by the sizes of cities more than by the details of power grids.

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Authors & Affiliations

Tommaso Nesti1, Fiona Sloothaak2, and Bert Zwart1,2

  • 1Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica, 1098 XG Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 2Eindhoven University of Technology, 5612 AZ Eindhoven, Netherlands

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Vol. 125, Iss. 5 — 31 July 2020

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