Blackouts, risk, and fat-tailed distributions

Rafał Weron () and Ingve Simonsen
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Ingve Simonsen: The Norwegian University of Science & Technology

Risk and Insurance from EconWPA

Abstract: We analyze a 19-year time series of North American electric power transmission system blackouts. Contrary to previously reported results we find a fatter than exponential decay in the distribution of inter- occurrence times and evidence of seasonal dependence in the number of events. Our findings question the use of self-organized criticality, and in particular the sandpile model, as a paradigm of blackout dynamics in power transmission systems. Hopefully, though, they will provide guidelines to more accurate models for evaluation of blackout risk.

Keywords: blackout; risk; fat-tailed distribution; power grid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-10-08
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 5 , 3 . To appear in: H. Takayasu (ed.), Proceedings of the 3rd Nikkei Econophysics Symposium, Springer-Tokyo, 2005/2006
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpri:0510001

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