Understanding the cascading failures in Indian power grids with complex networks theory

• We give a qualitative analysis about two recent Indian blackouts.
• We proposed a new practical model considering the active and reactive power loads.
• Numerical simulation is carried on to analyze the Indian power cascading failure.
• We find out the thresholds as guide for the engineers to choose proper capacities.

Two huge blackouts, occurred separately on 30 and 31 July 2012 in India, spread over half the country when three of its five regional grids collapsed, leaving hundreds of millions of people without government-supplied electricity and ringing once again alarm bells with security problems in electric power grid systems. The first investigation reveals that the outage of the second (backup) 400 kV Bina–Gwalior–Agra line on 29 July 2012 led to the cascading failure through the grid, which can be simulated and explained from the perspective of the complex networks theory. In this paper, a new model of a power grid involving the active and reactive power loads is proposed and then used to analyze the cascading behavior of power grids, which is also used to explain the reason of the blackout happening in India. Furthermore, some strategic advices are given for improving the stability and security of power grids, especially Indian power grids.