Author(s)

Milad Ghiasi Rad¹, Pedram Gharghabi^2*, Mohiyeddin Rahmani³, Bamdad Falahati⁴

¹Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, United States.
²Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi, United States.
³Department of Electrical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.
⁴Engineering Services, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc., Pullman, WA, United States.

In this paper, a new method has been introduced to find the most vulnerable lines in the system dynamically in an interconnected power system to help with the security and load flow analysis in these networks. Using the localization of power networks, the power grid can be divided into several divisions of sub-networks in which, the connection of the elements is stronger than the elements outside of that division. By using our proposed method, the probable important lines in the network can be identified to do the placement of the protection apparatus and planning for the extra extensions in the system. In this paper, we have studied the pathfinding strategies in most vulnerable line detection in a partitioned network. The method has been tested on IEEE39-bus system which is partitioned using hierarchical spectral clustering to show the feasibility of the proposed method.

Power Systems Network, Graph Partitioning, Path Finding, Vulnerability Analysis

Rad, M. , Gharghabi, P. , Rahmani, M. and Falahati, B. (2017) System Vulnerability Analysis Using Graph Pathfinding Strategies in Partitioned Networks. Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 5, 15-24. doi: 10.4236/jpee.2017.54003.