Optimal Configuration of Interdependence Between Communication Network and Power Grid

Abstract

Smart grid is a cyber-physical system with interdependent power grid and communication network. Such interdependence make the smart grid fragile against cascading failures, where an initial failure in communication network may lead to further failures in power grid, and vice versa. We prevent such inter-network cascading failure by stopping an initial failure from propagating. This is achieved by providing a sufficient number of power-disjoint communication routes between power nodes and control center. The number of power-disjoint routes is a robustness metric. We aim to maximize robustness by configuring the interdependence relationship between power grid and communication networks. Such relationship indicates which power node supplies energy to which communication node, and which communication route is used to connect which power node to the control center. Following Menger's Theorem, we transform such configuration problem into a Maxflow problem and solve it using the simplex algorithm. We have evaluated the proposed method through extensive simulations. The results confirm the optimality and computational efficiency of the proposed method. The number of power-disjoint routes increases with an increase in the network size, but can never exceed the number of node-disjoint routes for a same network.