The Key player problem in electric power grids

Identifying key players is a fundamental problem in network theory. Its origin can be traced back to social sciences and the problem led to ranking algorithms from most to least important player based on the structure of the considered network. Perhaps the most famous such ranking is google’s PageRank.

Identifying which power plant or which power line whose removal  would cause the most damage to a power grid is an altogether different problem. It requires not only to know the structure of the power grid, but also to take into account the voltage dynamics on the grid.

In a paper published in Science Advances, Philippe Jacquod, professor at DQMP, and researchers from HES Valais and EPFL have constructed an elegant and efficient method to identify fast and reliably which components of a power grid are the most vulnerable ones and where disturbances would perturb the grid the most.

Read the article in Science Advances

Contact: Prof. Philippe Jacquod (philippe.jacquod@unige.ch)