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The robust supply with electric power is fundamental for economy, industry and our daily life. In periods of high loads the breakdown of a single transmission line can cause a global cascade of failures implying large-scale outages with potentially catastrophic consequences. Such periods of high loads are expected to become more likely in the future, as electric power from renewable sources is often generated far away from the consumers. In this talk I will discuss the stability of power grids to transmission line failures from a network science perspective, addressing the following questions: Which links are indispensable for network operation? How does a failure spread, i.e. which parts of a network are affected by the initial failure? How can we efficiently detect those failures with few measurements?

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Dirk Witthaut, Institut für Energie- und Klimaforschung, FZ Jülich
TP seminar room 0.03
Contact: Joachim Krug