A Tutorial on Modeling and Analysis of Cascading Failure in Future Power Grids

Cascading failure inevitably emerges in complex power grids that can cause enormous economic losses. Over the past few decades, a great deal of effort has been devoted to failure cascade modeling, with the aim of understanding and preventing this complex process. Significant achievements include reproducing the uneven cascade propagation profiles and the power-law distribution of the size of the cascades. At the same time, power grids keep evolving, as driven by technology advancements and practical needs. Wide deployment of information technologies and high penetration of power electronics devices are two important features of future grids. These developments have profound influences on the cascading failure characteristics in future grids, which cannot be well addressed by existing models. In this tutorial, we provide an overview of the state-of-art approaches in studying cascading failure and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these methods. The explicit changes brought by the new features to the failure cascade processes are analyzed and the limitations of existing approaches are identified. Challenges in the modeling and analysis of cascading failure and possible research directions targeting the future power grids in the next research phase are presented.