A computationally-efficient network flow based transmission grid criticality analysis approach

A network theory based power grid vulnerability analysis approach is investigated in this paper. The proposed approach relies on calculation of maximum flow in order to asses the criticality of the complex power grid network. A computationally efficient method is devised that eliminates the repeated maximum flow calculations for various source-terminal combinations of the flow network representation. Moreover, parallel edges and load capacities are also included as an extension of existing research to evaluate power grid vulnerability based on maximum flow. The proposed method is illustrated with motivating examples and several standard test systems are also used to justify the effectiveness of the proposed method.