We analyze a 19-year time series of North American electric power transmission system blackouts. Contrary to previously reported results we find a fatter than exponential decay in the distribution of inter-occurrence times and evidence of seasonal dependence in the number of events. Our findings question the use of self-organized criticality, and in particular the sandpile model, as a paradigm of blackout dynamics in power transmission systems. Hopefully, though, they will provide guidelines to more accurate models for evaluation of blackout risk.
CITATION STYLE
Practical Fruits of Econophysics. (2006). Practical Fruits of Econophysics. Springer Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/4-431-28915-1
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