A new study in ScienceAdvances finds the incorporation of renewable energy can put small-scale power grids that include multiple types of power at risk for catastrophic energy failures.
shows that a lattice with only one consumer will require a critical coupling capacity of half the maximum power in the network, whereas an equivalent small-world network requires only around a quarter of the maximum power. The=0.1 system is therefore inherently easier to synchronize. Coupling parameter values can be rescaled to give quantities in kilowatts to gauge the typical maximum power values that a system can handle. This reveals an approximate lower bound of 18.3 kW .
To investigate the importance of these transient features in modern microgrids, we use a dynamic model of cascades based onto evaluate their resilience as a function of consumer/generator composition. We consider disruptions by two mechanisms. The first is through the power on any edge exceeding a prescribed maximum capacity α that it can carry, termed an overload failure.
shows the dependence of the proportion of failures F due to overloads or desynchronizations and the fraction of surviving edges S on the normalized capacity α/α