Risk and Vulnerability Assessment of Power grid under Seismic Hazards

Abstract: Power grids are one of the most important and complex infrastructure systems in our society. The components of power grid systems are susceptible to damage due to natural hazards and may lead to cascading failures of the system. Here, for the first time, we propose an integrated risk assessment framework for power grid system that combines: (1) geospatial and voltage level information of Chinese power grid and corresponding location of transmission towers; (2) stochastic earthquake scenarios that are generated based on a seismicity model and the Monte Carlo method and (3) cascading failure model to analyze the number of affected population under various power grid initial loads and capacities. This methodology is employed to evaluate the seismic risk of Chinese power grid system, where affected population is regarded as vulnerability metrics. The results show that Beijing, Hebei province and central area of Shandong and Qinghai province, eastern area of Sichuan province as well as southern area of Xinjiang province have higher seismic risk, which indicates high-aseismic measures should be adopted in the aforementioned areas. Meanwhile, we also found that the increase of capacity of the whole power grid will result in and increasing robustness of the power grid system and decreasing affected population.