Optimal Power Flow Contingency Planning for Electrical Grid Systems under N-K Failure Scenarios

The current N-1 requirements for electrical grid contingency planning are no longer adequate to address the increasing complexity of a grid system containing growing numbers of automated components and renewable energy generation sources. The often unpredictable nature of renewable generation resources coupled with the vulnerability of the automated components to cyber interventions opens up grid systems to the possibility of coordinated cyber-physical attacks on multiple grid components as well as simultaneous multiple component failures. This research will address methods for grid security contingency planning on N-K failure and attack scenarios by testing different parameters within the Cross-Entropy Method framework for combinatorial optimization.