Severe multiple contingency screening in electric power systems

We propose a computationally efficient approach to detect severe multiple contingencies. We pose a contingency analysis problem using a nonlinear optimization framework, which enables us to detect the fewest possible transmission line outages resulting in a system failure of specified severity, and to identify 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. © 2008 IEEE.