Identification of backbone-grid in power grid based on binary particle swarm optimization

Previous blackouts demonstrate that the safe and stable operation of backbone-grid plays a key role in preventing large-scale blackouts caused by cascading failures. Based on binary particle swarm optimization, a novel method is proposed to identify the backbone-grid in power grid. First, the concept of the backbone-grid is defined for mathematically describing the critical lines and important topology structure which are crucial for power system to prevent the blackout caused by cascading failures. On this basis, the problem of exploring backbone-grid is further formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming problem which is to be solved with binary particle swarm optimization. The problem just needs to be optimized only once. The backbone-grid essential to the safe and stable operation of power grid can be obtained. Simulation on IEEE RTS-79 system verifies that the proposed method can identify backbone-grid with high computational efficiency.