Mitigation strategies for weakest bus vulnerabilities in power grids

Bo Wu, Xiuli Wang and Zitong Zhao

Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2026, vol. 265, issue PB

Abstract: Ensuring the resilience of power grids against potential terrorist attacks is a critical challenge for modern energy systems. This study proposes an innovative three-stage evaluation method to identify the weakest bus in a power grid, considering the total number of affected line disconnections, the total impacted load, and the geographical extent of disruption. Experimental validation using an improved IEEE 30-bus system demonstrates the method’s effectiveness in accurately pinpointing the most vulnerable bus. Based on this assessment, a five-objective optimization framework is developed, incorporating three strategic planning measures: backup power supply deployment, preset transmission line reinforcement, and double-circuit line construction. To efficiently solve this complex sparse multi-objective mixed-integer programming problem with 490 decision variables, we introduce a novel evolutionary algorithm, PSL-SCEA. By leveraging a population of 50 individuals over 1,000,000 evolutionary evaluations, the proposed method successfully generates 15 Pareto-optimal solutions. The results demonstrate a well-balanced trade-off between economic feasibility and grid robustness, providing a strategic foundation for enhancing power grid resilience against potential disruptions. This study also investigates the scalability of the proposed method by applying it to the larger-scale IEEE 57-bus system, resulting in a set of 37 Pareto-optimal solutions.

Keywords: Terrorist grid attack mitigation; Integrated multi-objective optimization; Weakest bus evaluation; Sparsity-aware Pareto solutions; Stability and economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832025008221
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reensy:v:265:y:2026:i:pb:s0951832025008221

DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2025.111622

Access Statistics for this article

Reliability Engineering and System Safety is currently edited by Carlos Guedes Soares

More articles in Reliability Engineering and System Safety from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().