Identifying Initial Events of Cascading Failures Using Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) Method

Transmission lines and transformers are the most important equipment of a power network, the outage of which can lead to cascading failure. This paper tries to identify those lines or transformers that cannot be prevented from being overloaded by operations such as load shedding or production decrease through considering a model of cascade outage simulation. Also, one of the risk assessment methods, called Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) method, is used to identify the critical network lines and transformers known as initial events of cascading failures. This method through the evaluation of three criteria ofseverity, occurrence, and detection assesses and categorizes the risk priority number (RPN) of the combination of possible N-K (1). The proposed method was implemented in the IEEE 39-bus test system, and its results showed its accuracy compared to the other methods.