Blocking cascading failures with optimal corrective transmission switching considering available correction time

Abstract

Corrective transmission switching has been a promising technic for handling contingencies in power systems. The corrective solutions obtained from optimal formulations or heuristic methods are usually considered executable. However, when considering the contingency-induced cascading failures, where the temperature relay of lines may act quickly, the systems may have not enough time to take corrective actions. Thus some corrective solutions may be infeasible in practical applications. To further study the feasibility of corrective solutions, in this paper, considering the available correction time, which is derived from a continuous temperature evolution model, two methods are proposed to validate the corrective solutions obtained from a modified optimal corrective transmission switching formulation. Besides, based on the available correction time, a comprehensive method is proposed to block cascading failures and a critical index is proposed to evaluate critical cascading failures. Numeric studies on test systems show that there are considerable infeasible solutions in the solutions obtained from the optimal corrective formulation, which indicates that it is critical to consider the available correction time when utilizing the corrective solutions in real cases. Results also show the proposed comprehensive method and index are effective to handle cascading failures.