Analyzing power network vulnerability with maximum flow based centrality approach

Complex network theory has been studied extensively in solving large scale practical problems and the recent developments have given a new direction to power system research. This theory allows modeling a power system as a network and the latest developments incorporate more and more electrical properties as opposed to the topological analysis in the past. In the past, such networks have been analyzed based on shortest path travel and betweenness index. In a power system, the power might not necessarily flow only through the shortest path so this paper proposes a centrality index based on the maximum power flow through the edges. The links which carry more portion of power from the source (generator) to sink (load) are given a higher weight in this analysis. Few simple cases have been explained and then the algorithm has been demonstrated on the IEEE 39 bus system.