Heterogeneity of the European grids: edge weight, community structure and structural improvements

Making a given high-voltage power grid more stable and reliable has become a relevant question,
especially when considering the current energetic situation or future development plans to
augment and interconnect the existing network with renewable energy sources. Understanding
the behavior and identifying the critical nodes and links of the network constructed from the
power grid data, give us insight into possible ways to optimize its stability.
We investigate the European high-voltage power grid by not only considering the actual
connections between the nodes but also calculating the edge admittances and weights based on
the 2016 SciGRID project data. We perform community detection analysis and show the level
of synchronization on the 2016 European HV power grids, by solving the set of swing equations.
By investigating these synchronization levels and communities, we identify critical nodes and
links that play a key role in power transmission between different power regions and propose
two ways to improve the synchronization level in the network.

[1] Ódor, Géza and Deng, Shengfeng and Hartmann, Bálint and Benedek, Kristóf and Kelling, Jeffrey,
Heterogeneity of the European grids: nodal behaviour, edge weight, frequency analysis, to be
published.
[2] Ódor, Géza and Deng, Shengfeng and Hartmann, Bálint and Kelling, Jeffrey, Phys. Rev. E, 106,
(2022), 3.