Large-scale communications blackouts, such as those carried out by Egypt and Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2012 and 2013, have motivated a series of projects that aim to enable citizens to communicate even in the face of such heavy-handed censorship efforts. A common theme across these proposals has been the use of wireless mesh networks. We argue that such networks are poorly equipped to serve as...

The study of the dynamics taking place during power system blackouts is a subject that receives continuous attention in view of its inherent complexity and relevant consequences. Within this context, the paper aims at studying the role of the frequency control reserves (FCRs) on the cascading outages and the relevant short-term dynamics associated with the blackout mechanisms. The relationship ...

this paper proposes a novel approach for coherent generators online clustering in a large power system following a wide area disturbance. an interconnected power system may become unstable due to severe contingency when it is operated close to the stability boundaries. hence, the bulk power system controlled islanding is the last resort to prevent catastrophic cascading outages and wide area bl...

We verify and examine criticality in a 1000 bus network with an AC blackout model that represents many of the interactions that occur in cascading failure. At the critical loading there is a sharp rise in the mean b l a c k out size and a power law probability distr ibution of blackout size that indicates a s i g n i f i cant risk of large blackouts.

This paper presents an assessment of the vulnerability of the power grid to blackout using graph topological indexes. Based on a FERC 715 report and the outage reports, the cascading faults of summer WSCC 1996 are reconstructed, and the graphical property of the grid is compared between two cases: when the blackout triggering lines are removed simulating the actual sequence of cascading outages...

A model has been developed to study the global complex dynamics of a series of blackouts in power transmission systems [1, 2]. This model has included a simple level of self-organization by incorporating the growth of power demand and the engineering response to system failures. Two types of blackouts have been identified with different dynamical properties. One type of blackout involves loss o...

Cascading failures in large-scale electric power transmission systems are an important cause of blackouts. Analysis of North American blackout data has revealed power law (algebraic) tails in the blackout size probability distribution which suggests a dynamical origin. With this observation as motivation, we examine cascading failure in a simplified transmission system model as load power deman...