Comprehensive N-k contingency analysis requires evaluating exponentially many failure combinations, making exhaustive analysis computationally infeasible for large systems. This work is innovative because it uses statistical heuristics to intelligently prune the search space, identifying critical contingencies with significantly fewer simulations. The approach enables operators to focus protection resources on truly dangerous failure modes.
This paper develops heuristic algorithms for identifying critical N-k contingencies in power systems that efficiently reduce the search space of possible failure combinations. The approach uses frequency distribution analysis of system impedance changes to identify likely critical contingencies without exhaustive enumeration. The algorithms enable practical contingency analysis for large power systems by reducing computational requirements while maintaining accuracy.
The heuristic algorithms identified critical N-4 contingencies for the IEEE-57 bus system using only 24,469 simulations compared to 259,600 simulations for exhaustive search, reducing computational effort by 90%. The algorithms identified the same critical contingencies as exhaustive search while significantly reducing execution time, demonstrating practical feasibility for larger systems.
@inproceedings{Hasan2017a,
author = {Hasan}, S. and {Ghafouri}, A. and Dubey, Abhishek and {Karsai}, G. and {Koutsoukos}, X.},
booktitle = {2017 Resilience Week (RWS)},
title = {Heuristics-based approach for identifying critical N-k contingencies in power systems},
year = {2017},
month = {sep},
pages = {191-197},
abstract = {Reliable operation of electrical power systems in the presence of multiple critical N - k contingencies is an important challenge for the system operators. Identifying all the possible N - k critical contingencies to design effective mitigation strategies is computationally infeasible due to the combinatorial explosion of the search space. This paper describes two heuristic algorithms based on the iterative pruning of the candidate contingency set to effectively and efficiently identify all the critical N - k contingencies resulting in system failure. These algorithms are applied to the standard IEEE-14 bus system, IEEE-39 bus system, and IEEE-57 bus system to identify multiple critical N - k contingencies. },
category = {conference},
contribution = {colab},
doi = {10.1109/RWEEK.2017.8088671},
file = {:Hasan2017a-Heuristics-based_approach_for_identifying_critical_N_k_contingencies_in_power_systems.pdf:PDF},
issn = {null},
keywords = {contingency analysis, power systems, heuristic algorithms, critical contingencies, reliability},
project = {cps-reliability,smart-energy},
tag = {platform,power},
month_numeric = {9}
}