Studying cascading overload failures under high penetration of wind generation

Abstract

While power systems are reliable infrastructures, their complex interconnectivities allow for propagation of disturbances through cascading failures which causes blackouts. Meanwhile the ever increasing penetration level of renewable generation into power grids introduces a massive amount of uncertainty to the grid that might have a severe impact on grid vulnerability to overload cascading failures. There are numerous studies in the literature that focus on modeling cascading failures with different approaches. However, there is a need for studies that simulate cascading failure considering the uncertainty coming from high penetration of renewable generation. In this study, the impacts of wind generation in terms of its penetration and uncertainty levels on grid vulnerability to cascading overload failures are studied. The simulation results on IEEE 300 bus system show that uncertainty coming from wind energy have severe impact on grid vulnerability to cascading overload failures. Results also suggest that higher penetration levels of wind energy if not managed appropriately will add to this severity due to injection of higher uncertainties into the grid.