Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

In this work, we propose a computationally feasible approach todetect severe multiple contingencies. We pose a contingency analysis problem using a nonlinear optimization framework, which enables usto detect the fewest possible transmission line outages resulting ina system failure of specified severity, and the most severe system failure caused by removing a specified number of transmission lines from service. Illustrations using a three bus system and the IEEE ~;30 bus system aim to exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed approach.