Modeling Impact of Communication Network Failures on Power Grid Reliability

Communication networks in the smart grids play an important role in the reliability of power delivery. When power grid is stressed as a result of failures due to natural disasters and attacks (e.g., High Altitude Electro-Magnetic Pulse (HEMP) and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD's)), successive interdependent failures may propagate within and across these networks leading to large-scale cascading-failures and blackouts. Failures in power grid can affect the communication network, which in turn, may affect the power grid, and so on. In this paper, we study the influence of communication network functionality on the power grid. Specifically, we analyze the impact of such interdependencies on the reliability of the power grid by capturing the influence of the communication network on the power grid during cascading phenomenon. Two critical topological parameters of the communication network are studied, namely the hop distance and the node degree, which are used to determine the coupling parameter between the two systems and to quantify the influence of communication network in the power grid. Finally, numerical results has been carried out to quantify the impact of communication network failure on power grid reliability and validate our proposed model.