Largest blackouts around the world: Trends and data analyses

Abstract

Blackouts are among the last remaining major challenges in power systems. In this paper, publicly available data have been compiled into a dataset of large-scale blackouts that happened from 1965 to 2015. A formula has been devised to filter the largest blackouts by equally weighting the number of people affected and the total restoration. Analysis is then performed on the selected data points in order to find trends and patterns. This paper also explores the different causes that trigger initial disturbances in the power system; some of which eventually leads to a cascading effect and cause widespread power failures. Finally, region-wise risk analysis of different causes of large-scale blackouts as well as fault analysis have been performed