Component-Level Analysis of System Degradation, Restoration, and Resilience: Development of a Scalable Grid Interconnection-Point Availability Model

Abstract

Electric-grid resilience is difficult to quantify because system performance depends on network topology, component reliability, operating configuration, and restoration time. This project produced a scalable component-level framework for estimating resilience at grid interconnection points. The framework converts standard power-system planning models to undirected network graphs, and uses iterative minimum-cut calculations to identify branch combinations capable of disconnecting each location. Prescribed component failure rates and restoration times are associated with the graph edges and aggregated across the identified cut sets to calculate nodal availability and unavailability. A separate connectivity-loss measure records how frequently each node is disconnected across the enumerated cuts and provides a topology-based indicator independent of outage probability. The method was verified on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 14- and 57-bus test systems, and the software installation was extended to Eastern Interconnection subsystems. Results show that expected service continuity varies by location according to source-path redundancy, component performance, and restoration assumptions. The resulting approach provides an interpretable measure of expected grid performance and risk to support identification of vulnerable interconnection points, comparison of infrastructure alternatives, prioritization of component hardening, and resilience-informed decision-making.