Fast Algorithm for N-2 Contingency Problem

TL;DR

This paper introduces a non-heuristic, efficient algorithm for N-2 contingency analysis in power grids, capable of identifying all critical events with complexity comparable to N-1 analysis, validated on a large-scale network.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, certified selection algorithm for N-2 contingency analysis that reduces computational complexity and candidate pairs significantly.

Findings

Reduces candidate pairs from 5 million to 6,128 in a large grid

Algorithm complexity is O(N^2), similar to N-1 analysis

Validated on Polish grid network with successful pruning

Abstract

We present a novel selection algorithm for N-2 contingency analysis problem. The algorithm is based on the iterative bounding of line outage distribution factors and successive pruning of the set of contingency pair candidates. The selection procedure is non-heuristic, and is certified to identify all events that lead to thermal constraints violations in DC approximation. The complexity of the algorithm is O(N^2) comparable to the complexity of N-1 contingency problem. We validate and test the algorithm on the Polish grid network with around 3000 lines. For this test case two iterations of the pruning procedure reduce the total number of candidate pairs by a factor of almost 1000 from 5 millions line pairs to only 6128.