Emergent failures and cascades in power grids: a statistical physics perspective

TL;DR

This paper models power grid failures as complex network cascades influenced by weather and renewable sources, providing a rigorous, data-validated framework for understanding failure propagation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel statistical physics approach to rank and analyze line failure likelihoods considering weather correlations and renewable intermittency.

Findings

Identifies the most probable failure pathways in power grids.

Provides a mathematically rigorous method validated with German grid data.

Offers insights into failure propagation mechanisms in complex networks.

Abstract

We model power grids transporting electricity generated by intermittent renewable sources as complex networks, where line failures can emerge indirectly by noisy power input at the nodes. By combining concepts from statistical physics and the physics of power flows, and taking weather correlations into account, we rank line failures according to their likelihood and establish the most likely way such failures occur and propagate. Our insights are mathematically rigorous in a small-noise limit and are validated with data from the German transmission grid.