Introduction of Cascading Failures

Cascading failures are considered the most severe threats to power systems. If not effectively prevented or mitigated, they may lead to catastrophic power blackouts and substantial losses. This chapter first draws insights from historical cascading and blackout events and then introduces the industrial practices and state-of-the-art technologies for prevention, and mitigation of cascading failures, and system restoration from blackouts. Given the intricate nature of cascading failures, this chapter highlights three important subjects: risk assessment, modeling, and simulation. These subjects also serve as the overarching themes of this book. The chapter explores the requisites, challenges, and current methodologies associated with the three subjects and provides an introduction to the remainder of this book.