Analysis of cascading failure in electric grid based on power flow entropy

Large-scale blackouts are an intrinsic drawback of electric power transmission grids. Here we propose a concept of power flow entropy to quantify the overall heterogeneity of load distribution and then investigate the relationship between the power flow entropy and cascading failure. Simulation results, from the small-world 300-node test system and the IEEE 300-bus system, show that the power flow entropy has close relations with the cascading failure in terms of both the dynamic propagation course and the static blackout size. Particularly, at the early stage of failure spreading the potential large blackout can be identified according to the power flow entropy. The power flow entropy can serve as an index not only for long-term planning, but also for short-term operational defense to large-scale blackouts.