LAUSR

Abstract Cascading failure is the main mechanism for progressing large blackouts in power systems. Following an initial event, it is challenging to predict whether there is a potential for starting cascading failure. In fact, the potential of an event for starting a cascading failure depends on many factors such as network structure, system operating point and nature of the event. In this paper, based on the application of decision tree, a new approach is proposed for identifying harmful line outages with the potential of starting and propagating cascading failures. For this purpose, associated with each trajectory of the cascading failure, a blackout index is defined that determines the potential of the initial event for triggering cascading failures towards power system blackout. In order to estimate the blackout indices associated with a line outage, a three stages harmful estimator decision tree (HEDT) is proposed. The proposed HEDT works based on the online operating data provided by a wide area monitoring system (WAMS). The New England 39-bus test system is utilized to show the worthiness of the proposed algorithm.