Cascading Failures in Power Grids: Risk Assessment, Modeling, and Simulation (Power Electronics and Power Systems)

Cascading failures as long chains of events and outages are threats to reliable operations of power grids and can lead to catastrophic blackouts with tremendous losses if not understood, prevented, or mitigated sufficiently. This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive presentation of emerging methods for risk assessment, modeling, and simulation of cascading failures in power grids. The methods are all supported by theories and experimental tests using realistic power grid models and data, and the contributors to this volume are leading scholars in the field. Specific topics covered include an introduction to cascading failures, probabilistic analytics of utility outage data and risks, quantitative influence and interaction models to understand and mitigate failure propagation, simulation of cascading failures using models of multiple time scales, and industrial criteria and practices against cascading failures.

Cascading Failures in Power Grids: Risk Assessment, Modeling, and Simulation will provide comprehensive and in-depth coverage of state-of-the-art methods for all readers interested in cascading failures and will inspire researchers and engineers to develop emerging and practical tools in the future. ​

Kai Sun, Ph.D., is a professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). Dr. Sun received his bachelor’s degree in automation and his Ph.D. in control science and engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1999 and 2004, respectively. From 2007 to 2012, he was a project manager for R&D programs in grid operations, planning, and renewable integration with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, California. At EPRI, Dr. Sun led the task force and project set on cascading failures, controlled system separation, and power system restoration from 2008 to 2010. Earlier, he was a research associate at Arizona State University in Tempe and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Dr. Sun received the U.S. NSF CAREER Award in 2016. His other awards include several IEEE PES Best Conference Papers Awards, a 2016 CRSTT Most Valuable Players Award by U.S. DOE/NASPI, the2009 EPRI Chauncey Award for contributions to “Advanced Tools for Reliable Operation and Robust Planning,” and the 2008 EPRI Technology Innovation Excellence Award for “establishing EPRI as a thought leader in cascading failures of power grids.” Dr. Sun has served as an associate editor with IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy, and IEEE Access. He co-authored the book Power System Control Under Cascading Failures: Understanding, Mitigation and System Restoration (Wiley-IEEE Press, 2018) and edited the book Power System Simulation Using Semi-Analytical Methods (Wiley-IEEE Press, 2023). Dr. Sun has published over 30 journal papers on modeling, prevention, and mitigation of cascading failures and holds four patents in this field.