Quantitative comparison of power grid reinforcements

Hartmann, Bálint and Ódor, Géza and Benedek, Kristóf and Papp, István and Cirunay, Michelle (2025) Quantitative comparison of power grid reinforcements. CHAOS SOLITONS & FRACTALS, 200. No. 117095. ISSN 0960-0779

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Abstract

This paper presents a head-to-head evaluation of three grid reinforcement strategies for the Hungarian high-voltage power grid: (1) duplicating inter-community “bridge” links, (2) inserting bypasses around poorly synchronized nodes, and (3) fortifying edges identified as cascade-triggering vulnerabilities. Built from official operator data, our grid models avoid simplifications typical in prior work and show coupling distributions in close agreement with European and North American grids. Our results show that community-based bridge duplication consistently outperforms both bypass additions and cascade-based reinforcements. It delivers the most robust increase in synchronization, frequency stability, and cascade mitigation across all tested cases. In contrast, cascade-based reinforcement is stronger under low coupling conditions, while bypass strategies present superior frequency spread control in intermediate regimes. We also discuss how Braess’ paradox is manifested in certain network configurations. As reinforcing specific lines actually decreases the grids stability, there is a need for topology-aware planning. Our line-cut cascade simulations show fat-tailed cascade time distributions at intermediate coupling strengths, which is indicative of Griffiths-type scaling near a hybrid phase transition. Simultaneously, edge behaviors return to exponential at extremes of the evaluated range. To our knowledge, this is the first quantitative comparison combining oscillator models with conventional power system analysis tools, offering a rigorous bridge between theoretical and operational perspectives.

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