The waiting-time distribution for network partitions in cascading failures in power networks

Abstract

Network redundancy is one of the spatial properties critical to robustness against cascading failures in power networks. Waiting-time distributions for network partitions in cascading failures explain how spatial network structures affect the cascading behaviors temporally. Two waiting time events associated with the first and largest network partitions in cascading failures are studied. With synthetic power networks, waiting-time distributions of network partitions can be systematically analyzed for various network redundancies. Waiting-time distributions take longer from the local redundancy to the global redundancy. Meanwhile, the largest network partition during a cascading failure may not be unique. In power networks with larger global redundancies, the multiple largest network partitions happen more likely, and the sizes of the largest partitions decrease while their number increases statistically. Simulations in realistic power networks demonstrate the same spatio-temporal behaviors as revealed in synthetic power networks.