Page "Power outage" Paragraph 16

It has been argued on the basis of historical data that power grids are self-organized critical systems.

These systems exhibit unavoidable disturbances of all sizes, up to the size of the entire system.

This phenomenon has been attributed to steadily increasing demand / load, the economics of running a power company, and the limits of modern engineering.

While blackout frequency has been shown to be reduced by operating it further from its critical point, it generally isn ’ t economically feasible, causing providers to increase the average load over time or upgrade less often resulting in the grid moving itself closer to its critical point.

Conversely, a system past the critical point will experience too many blackouts leading to system-wide upgrades moving it back below the critical point.

The term critical point of the system is used here in the sense of statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics, representing the point where a system undergoes a phase transition ; in this case the transition from a steady reliable grid with few cascading failures to a very sporadic unreliable grid with common cascading failures.

Near the critical point the relationship between blackout frequency and size follows a power law distribution.

Other leaders are dismissive of system theories that conclude that blackouts are inevitable, but do agree that the basic operation of the grid must be changed.

The Electric Power Research Institute champions the use of smart grid features such as power control devices employing advanced sensors to coordinate the grid.

Others advocate greater use of electronically controlled High-voltage direct current ( HVDC ) firebreaks to prevent disturbances from cascading across AC lines in a wide area grid.