2010 Complexity in Engineering

The Concept of Betweenness in the Analysis of Power Grid Vulnerability

Ettore Bompard, Di Wu, Fei Xue Department of Electrical Engineering Politecnico di Torino Torino, Italy ettore.bompard@polito.it Abstract
Vulnerability analysis in power systems is a key issue in modern society and many efforts have contributed to the analysis. Recently, complex network metrics applied to assess the topological vulnerability of networked systems have been used in power systems, such as betweenness metric, since transmission of power systems is in basis of a network structure. However, a pure topological approach fails to capture the specificity of power systems. This paper redefines, starting from the concept of complex networks, an electrical betweenness metric which considers several of specific features of power systems such as power transfer distribution and line flow limits. The electrical betweenness is compared with the conventional betweenness in IEEE-300 bus network according to the un-served energy after network is attacked. The results show that the tested network is more vulnerable when the components of the network are attacked according to their criticalities ranked by electrical betweenness. defined two well-known classes of complex networks: small-world networks [3] and scale-free networks [4]. Recent works demonstrate that electrical power grids are the small-world networks [5]-[7] but they have the characteristic of scale-free networks [8] [9]. The topological properties of complex network can be analyzed by some metrics and among them betweenness plays key role in the identification of critical components (vertices and edges) of complex network [10][11]. However, most of metrics including betweenness looking into electric power grid from a pure topological perspective fails to capture some basic and important features such as electrical distance, line flow limit and power transfer distribution. Consequently, the research results may be far from real physical behavior. In order to overcome this problem, we redefine the topological betweenness as an electrical betweenness that can take above-mentioned features into account. The proposed betweenness is analyzed and compared with the conventional betweenness in IEEE-300 bus network using a DC load shedding model which is the simplified engineering model in power systems to compute the un-served energy after components of network are attacked.

1. Introduction
Vulnerability analysis is necessary for electrical utility operators to identify the vulnerable components whose protection or back-up will result in a system that is more robust against natural or malicious threats. The conventional vulnerability analysis based on complete operation data and standard engineering models in power systems [1] [2] is challenged in large power systems since the topological and physical properties become more and more complicate in power systems with the increase of size and introduction of electricity market. It is noticed that there exits a close relation between topological structure and physical properties of power systems. So the vulnerability can be assessed from the topological perspective. Most social, biological and technological network have shown non-trivial topological features that have
978-0-7695-3974-4/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE DOI 10.1109/COMPENG.2010.10 52

2. The betweenness metric for topological network

In complex networks, the networked system such as power grid can be abstracted as directed and weighted graph Y={B,L} to analyze the inherent structure feature, where B is the set of vertices (or nodes) and L is the set of edges (or links) with an associate set of weights W. Each vertex can be identified by bi; the edge is identified by lij that represents a connection going from vertex i to vertex j and that is associated to a weight wij. A walk from vertex i to vertex j is a sequence of vertices and edges that begins with i and end with j while a path is a walk in which no vertex is visited

more than once. A geodesic path (i.e. shortest path) is the path which has minimal number of edges between two vertices. The geodesic distance dij is the number of edges in geodesic path between vertices i to j. In a network, the importance of a vertex can be measured by the betweenness of vertex, which is defined as [12]: NB N B ij (v) ,i j vB (1) B(v) =
i j

ij

where ij(v) is the number of the geodesic paths between vertices i and j that pass through a vertex v (i ju). ij denotes the total number of the geodesic paths connecting vertex i and vertex j. NB is the number of vertex in network. Similarly, the edge betweenness can also be defined as: NB NB ij (l ) ,i jB ,l L (2) B(l ) =
i j

where hlg and hld are respectively the l-th row g-th column and l-th row d-th column of H. In order to maintain the stability and security operation of power grid, each transmission line l has its own transmission limit Flmax. The line flow limits play a major role in the power transmission between generation buses and load buses; to consider their impacts we define the power transmission capacity Cgd as the power which is injected at bus g and withdrawn at bus d when the first line, in all electrical paths connecting a generation g and a load d reaches its limit. In formulas: d Cg = min( Fl max hlgd ) (4)

ij

Where ij(l) is the number of the geodesic paths between vertices i and j that includes the edge l.

3. Betweenness metric for electrical power grid

The complex network theory has been successfully applied in analysis of technological networks such as World Wide Web. However, the pure topological concepts and metrics disregard real physical properties and operative constraints of the power grid, so the straight application of the topological perspective fails in capturing the specificity of power grid. In complex network, each vertex, which may be a source or a sink, has equal function when some physical quantities are transmitted over network. However, in power grid, buses in terms of various functions are distinguished as generation buses, load buses and transmission buses. Furthermore, the power is transmitted from generation buses to load buses and each transmission line provides its own contribution involving basically all the buses of the system. In the linear model of power systems, the contribution of each transmission line to power transmission is computed by Power Transfer Distribution Factor (PTDF). PTDF reflects the sensitivity of the power flowing on each line for a power injection/withdrawal at a couple of buses. PTDF can be represented by a NL NB matrix H in which each element hlj express the change of power on each line l for a unit change of power injection at bus j and withdrawal at the reference bus; hlgd is the change of the power on line l (lL) for injection at generation bus g and withdrawal at load bus d, and hlgd can be computed as follows: hlgd = hlg hld , l L (3)

According to above-mentioned specific features of power grid, the betweenness of bus can be redefined as: 1 d T (v ) = C g hlgd , v g d B (5) 2 gG d D lLV where 1/2|hlgd| is the sum of the PTDF of all lines connecting a bus v when a power injecting at bus g and withdrawing at bus d; 1/2Cgd|hlgd| represents the actual transmission power taken by the bus v when the power is transmitted from generation bus g to load bus d; T(v)is the total transmission power taken by the bus v in the whole power grid; G and D respectively are the sets of generation buses and load buses; LV is the set of lines connecting a bus v. Similarly, edge betweenness of line can be redefined as: T (l ) = max[T p (l ), T n (l ) ] , l L (6)
where Tp(l) and |Tn(l)| represent respectively the positive betweenness and the negative betweenness of the line l: d gd T p (l ) = Cg hl ,if hlgd > 0
gG d D d gd T (l ) = C g hl ,if hlgd < 0 n g G d D

l L

where hlgd is the PTDF on line l when a power injecting at generation bus g and withdrawing at load bus d; Cgdhlgd represents the actual transmitting power on the line l when the power is transmitted from g to d; T(l)is the total transmitting power on line l.

4. Numerical analysis
In this section, the electrical betweenness is compared with the topological betweenness in IEEE 300-bus network [13] which consists of 409 lines and 300 buses including 69 generator buses and 199 load buses. The comparison is made by the un-served energy after the network is attacked by removing the components (buses or lines). The un-served energy is

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computed by an engineering vulnerability assessment model (VSM) [1] through optimal dispatch and load shedding, using DC power flow. Because various network operation states may result in distinct results of VSM for the same attacks, the un-served energy evaluation for the same attacks are averaged in 100 various instances. In each instance, the load demand randomly changes in the interval [0, 2Pd] (Pd is the base load demand in the network, dD). Take betweenness of line for example. Firstly, the betweenness metric is used to rank lines in descending order criticality which suggests Strategy 1 to attack the network. In each evaluation, after successive removal of the lines according to the Strategy1, the change of un-served energy is computed by VSM. Fig. 1 shows the average change of un-served load for the Strategy1. Similarly, another Strategy2 relative to the removing order of lines is ranked by the topological betweenness metric. Also, Fig.1 reports the average change of unserved energy for the Strategy2. From Fig. 1, the amount of un-served load after each line attack according to strategy1 is more than that depending on strategy2. That implies that the criticality of lines ranked by electrical betweenness is more effective than the topological betweenness.
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[1] J. Salmeron, K. Wood, and R. Baldick, Analysis of electric grid security under terrorist threat, IEEE Transactions On Power Systems., vol. 19, no.: 2, May, 2004, pp. 905912, doi: 10.1109/TPWRS.2004.825888. [2] Cai, G. W., Chan, K. W., Yuan, W. P. and Mu, G., Identification of the vulnerable transmission segment and cluster of critical machines using line transient potential energy, International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, vol. 29, no.: 3, Mar. 2007, pp.199-207, doi: 10.1016/j.ijepes.2006.06.007.

Unserved load / total load (%)

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Topological betweenness Electrical betweenness

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ID of attack lines ranked by betweenness metric

Figure 1. The average change of un-served load after line attacks for strategy1 &2

5. Conclusion
In this paper we propose an electric betweenness metric by introducing specificity of power grid. The proposed metric is compared with topological betweenness in IEEE-300 bus network. The results show the network is more vulnerable when the network is attacked by removing critical components identified by electrical betweenness metric.

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6. References

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