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5, SEPTEMBER 2015
N-k Induced Cascading Contingency Screening
Youwei Jia, Student Member, IEEE, Ke Meng, Member, IEEE, and Zhao Xu, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis letter proposes a novel method for N-k induced
cascading contingency screening based on random vector func-
tional-link (RVFL) neural network and quantum inspired multi-
objective evolutionary algorithm (QMEA). This method can con-
duct reliable and simultaneous screening for various N-k contin-
gencies. The proposed method has been proved to be highly ef-
fective through a preliminary case study using the New England
39-bus system.
Index TermsCascading failures, N-k contingency screening,
quantum inspired multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, random
vector functional-link neural network.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE classical N-1 criterion was intended to inhibit cas-
cading failures in power systems. However, the deciency
of this criterion has come to light after many recent blackout
events. This highlights the need of more strengthened security
criterion for power system robust operation. The electricity in-
dustry has revised the reliability standards (e.g., NERC Standard
PRC-023, U.S.) to require utilities to consider not only single
contingencies, but also N-k (where ) contingencies which
could initiate cascades.
N-k contingency analysis, also called as power network in-
terdiction problem (PNIP), is always intractable because of 1)
high computational cost; 2) complexity of power system net-
work; and 3) various system operating conditions. In consid-
ering post-contingency phase, an extra layer of complexity (i.e.,
a variety of cascading chains) is added to PNIP and makes it
more challenging to be solved. A methodology that can ef-
ciently and accurately identify a specic set of N-k contingen-
cies with high cascading risk is therefore valuable.
In this letter, we pose the PNIP as a multi-objective optimiza-
tion problem to maximize the cascading risk while minimizing
the number of transmission line outages . The method relies on
RVFL network for fast estimating cascading risk under different
operating scenarios, and QMEA for N-k contingencies screening
with a wide range of . This method successfully overcomes the
difculties mentioned above, and also takes into account the post-
contingency cascading process, which is barely or inadequately
concerned by existing optimization methods (e.g., [1]).
II. METHODOLOGY
As shown in Fig. 1, the proposed method consists of cas-
cading failure simulation module (CFSM), risk estimation
Manuscript received May 20, 2014; accepted September 23, 2014. Date of
publication October 14, 2014; date of current version July 17, 2015. This work
was supported in part by Hong Kong RGC GRF Grant no. 528412, and in part
by Theme Based Research Scheme Grant no. T23-407/13-N. Paper no. PESL-
00071-2014.
Y. Jia and Z. Xu are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, The
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong (e-mail: corey.jia@connect.
polyu.hk; eezhaoxu@polyu.edu.hk).
K. Meng is with the Centre of Intelligent Electricity Networks, The University
of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia (e-mail: kemeng@ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPWRS.2014.2361723
0885-8950 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 30, NO.
Fig. 1. Structure of proposed contingency screening method.
module (REM), and contingency screening module (CSM).
CFSM generates cascading risk database containing different
operating scenarios, which is utilized to train RVFL network
in REM. A well-trained REM can efciently assess the cas-
cading risk of an N-k failure using simple matrix calculation.
In formulating the PNIP as a multi-objective problem, QMEA
utilized in CSM can effectively capture a bunch of Pareto fronts
of contingencies with different rankings in a large search space.
A. Cascading Failure Simulation Module
Modeling of cascading process remains an open problem when
considering different mechanisms. A comprehensive review of
cascades modeling and risk assessment is given in [2]. In this
letter, we are more interested in hidden failures [3] of protection
facilities to evaluate cascading risk, since it has been reported
that over 70% of cascades are caused by malfunction of relays.
A cascade is triggered by an N-k failure, after which the
system will be re-dispatched and some overloaded lines are ex-
posed. An overloaded line will be tripped with a particular prob-
ability, which is based on the hidden failure model [3]. In our
model, we assume that all generators have limited capability to
ramp up or down to accommodate generation-load imbalance.
Thereby, a homogeneous load shedding strategy will be served
to the system to maintain generation-load balance. A cascading
simulation terminates on the conditions of no overloaded line or
non-convergence of power ow.
Since the cascading chain differs with different probability,
Monte Carlo simulations are applied to each N-k cascading risk
estimation. Parallel computing is employed in this step to speed
up simulation process.
In order to evaluate the combined impact of load shedding
and voltage violation, the risk is dened as (1):
(1)
where risk is dened as probability times consequence (i.e., load
shed or voltage violation). and are entropy weights of av-
erage risk of load shedding and voltage violation, respectively.
For each N-k contingency, data entropy can perfectly reect the
information uncertainty of load shed and voltage violation based
on a number of Monte Carlo simulations. For more analysis of
entropy weight, readers can refer to our previous study [4].
JIA et al.: N-K INDUCED CASCADING CONTINGENCY SCREENING
Given a set of Monte Carlo simulation results ,
where the rst row indicates the risk of load shedding and the
second one for voltage violation, the entropy of each type of risk
is expressed as
Thus, the entropy weight can be formulated as (2):
(2)
B. Risk Evaluation Module
The essential part of REM is RVFL, which works for a single
hidden-layer feed forward neural network (SLFN) [5]. The
structure of RVFL network is shown in Fig. 1. A training data set
with N arbitrary distinct samples
is generated by CFSM, where the input vector consists of
power ow on each line and voltage on each bus indicating
different operating scenarios. RVFL network with a specic
activation function and randomly assigned input weights
can efciently approximate all sample data with zero error:
where is the weight vector connecting the th hidden node and
the input nodes, is the weight vector connecting the th hidden
node and the output nodes. is the threshold of the th hidden
node, and is the number of neurons in hidden layer. Details of
RVFL network training mechanism can be referred to [5].
As reported in [5], RVFL features extremely fast training
speed and overcomes the drawbacks of gradient-based learning
algorithms for training SLFNs (i.e., local minima, slow conver-
gence, and poor sensitivity to learning rate setting). By using
RVFL network in REM, an average cascading risk of N-k con-
tingency can be predicted efciently through simple matrix cal-
culation, which makes it computationally feasible to consider a
variety of post-contingency cascading chains.
C. Contingency Screening Module
QMEA in CSM serves as a problem-solving engine, which
features high capability of solution exploration and exploita-
tion [6]. By incorporating the fast non-dominated sorting (FNS)
[7] technique into QMEA, solutions close to the Pareto-optimal
front can be obtained. Further, a wide span of Pareto front is en-
sured by using the crowding distance measure (CDM) [7]. This
well fullls the goal of our method that tends to nd as many
solutions as possible in a large search space.
In each generation, the population is divided into several
groups, which are sorted according to FNS. The rst group,
which contains the best solutions, is used to guide the evolution.
Identical solutions in the rst group should be replaced by the
subsequent solutions so as to ensure the diversity and elitism of
population during the evolution.
The Pareto-optimal front only contains those highest-risk
N-k contingency under different 's, which is insufcient for,
e.g., security assessment. Therefore, the second best Pareto
front (called 2nd front) and the front of even higher order can
be generated through FNS in our method as well.
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Fig. 2. Pareto fronts (solid lines for heavy load condition; dash line for light
load condition).
TABLE I
N-2 CONTINGENCIES
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The proposed contingency screening method is preliminarily
tested using New England 39-bus system, where only two oper-
ating conditions (i.e., light load and heavy load) are considered.
Fig. 2 compares the results obtained by different conditions.
In order to validate the effectiveness of our screening method,
a complete cascading failure simulation based screening is con-
ducted for N-2 contingencies. Some results are shown in Table I,
which is consistent with the ones obtained by the proposed
method.
IV. CONCLUSION
An N-k induced cascading contingency screening method is
proposed. It is advantageous over other methods in 1) modeling
the post-contingency cascading process based on risk assess-
ment; 2) generating the ranking lists for N-k contingencies con-
sidering different 's through one Pareto optimization proce-
dure; and 3) high adaptability for different operating conditions.
Future work is underway to further enhance each module.
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