MATCASC: A tool to analyse cascading line outages in power grids

TL;DR

MATCASC is an open-source MATLAB tool designed to analyze cascading line outages in power grids, helping to assess and improve grid robustness against blackouts caused by cascading failures.

Contribution

The paper introduces MATCASC, a novel software tool for analyzing cascading failures in power grids, including real-world applications and robustness assessment.

Findings

MATCASC effectively analyzes cascading failures in IEEE test systems.

The tool assesses the robustness of real-world power grids.

It considers cascading effects due to line overload outages.

Abstract

Blackouts in power grids typically result from cascading failures. The key importance of the electric power grid to society encourages further research into sustaining power system reliability and developing new methods to manage the risks of cascading blackouts. Adequate software tools are required to better analyze, understand, and assess the consequences of the cascading failures. This paper presents MATCASC, an open source MATLAB based tool to analyse cascading failures in power grids. Cascading effects due to line overload outages are considered. The applicability of the MATCASC tool is demonstrated by assessing the robustness of IEEE test systems and real-world power grids with respect to cascading failures.