title: Islanding the power grid on the transmission level: less connections for more security.
abstract: Islanding is known as a management procedure of the power system that is implemented at the distribution level to preserve sensible loads from outages and to guarantee the continuity in electricity supply, when a high amount of distributed generation occurs. In this paper we study islanding on the level of the transmission grid and shall show that it is a suitable measure to enhance energy security and grid resilience. We consider the German and Italian transmission grids. We remove links either randomly to mimic random failure events, or according to a topological characteristic, their so-called betweenness centrality, to mimic an intentional attack and test whether the resulting fragments are self-sustainable. We test this option via the tool of optimized DC power flow equations. When transmission lines are removed according to their betweenness centrality, the resulting islands have a higher chance of being dynamically self-sustainable than for a random removal. Less connections may even increase the grid's stability. These facts should be taken into account in the design of future power grids.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mureddu
authors.affiliation: Institute for Advanced Studies IMT, 55100 Lucca, Italy.
authors.forename: Guido
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Caldarelli
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica ed Elettronica Universitá di Cagliari, Italy.
authors.forename: Alfonso
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Damiano
authors.affiliation: Institute for Advanced Studies IMT, 55100 Lucca, Italy.|ISC-CNR UoS "Sapienza", Piazzale Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy.|LIMS the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Mayfair, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scala
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Hildegard
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Meyer-Ortmanns