New AI Tool Keeps Your Lights On by Predicting Power Grid Failures

Rapid contingency screening is essential for secure transmission system operation and planning. Although full AC contingency analysis provides accurate system assessment, it requires high computational effort for large contingency sets. Topology-based screening methods reduce this burden but may not accurately represent operating-point-dependent electrical stress.

In addition, conventional single-contingency screening does not quantify interactions among simultaneous outages or provide a direct criterion for reinforcement prioritization. This paper presents a hybrid structural-electrical screening approach that combines a computationally efficient, dispatch-independent structural analysis based on reactance-weighted centrality measures with a flow-based severity assessment using line outage distribution factors. Two indices are evaluated using the flow-based severity: a synergy index to quantify super-additive interactions among simultaneous line outages and a tolerance index to rank reinforcement candidates based on their reduction in aggregate post-contingency severity.

The correspondence between structural indicators and electrical severity is evaluated quantitatively. Tests on the IEEE 39-bus system identify 115 super-additive line pairs beyond a 5% threshold, with the most severe interaction exceeding seven times the linear combination of individual outage effects. The highest-ranked reinforcement reduces the mean post-contingency thermal severity by 7.5%. The structural rankings show limited correlation with flow-based severity, with a Spearman coefficient of approximately 0.2. The proposed approach provides an efficient pre-screening method to reduce contingency and reinforcement search spaces before detailed AC and economic evaluations.