Cascading Failure in Power Transmission
Cascading failure is common in power grids when one of the elements fails (completely or partially) and shifts its load to nearby elements in the system. Those nearby elements are then pushed beyond their capacity so they become overloaded and shift their load onto other elements. Cascading failure is a common effect seen in high voltage systems, where a single point of failure (SPF) on a fully loaded or slightly overloaded system results in a sudden spike across all nodes of the system. This surge current can induce the already overloaded nodes into failure, setting off more overloads and thereby taking down the entire system in a very short time.
This failure process cascades through the elements of the system like a ripple on a pond and continues until substantially all of the elements in the system are compromised and/or the system becomes functionally disconnected from the source of its load. For example, under certain conditions a large power grid can collapse after the failure of a single transformer.
Monitoring the operation of a system, in real-time, and judicious disconnection of parts can help stop a cascade. Another common technique is to calculate a safety margin for the system by computer simulation of possible failures, to establish safe operating levels below which none of the calculated scenarios is predicted to cause cascading failure, and to identify the parts of the network which are most likely to cause cascading failures.
One of the primary problems with preventing electrical grid failures is that the speed of the control signal is no faster than the speed of the propagating power overload, i.e. since both the control signal and the electrical power are moving at the speed of light, it is not possible to isolate the outage by sending a warning ahead to isolate the element. To ameliorate this systemic defect, superconducting magnetic energy storage units at critical junctions can store or release power for a few seconds to allow control systems to catch up and actuate isolating procedures.
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