Increasing the Efficiency of the Brazilian Power Grid

Resumo

We assess four methods that aim at improving the efficiency of electric power grids through the addition of new transmission lines, using complex network theory. We modeled the Brazilian high voltage transmission network as a graph in order to test these methods. The first method consists in connecting the pairs of nodes with the lowest degree in the network. The second connects the nodes with the lowest betweenness. The third links the pairs of nodes with the lowest degree that are connected to the mostly loaded nodes in the network. The last method connects nodes with median betweenness. Each method was tested with and without the min-cut procedure, which is capable of identifying the edges that, once removed, divide the network in two separate sub-networks. All the methods were capable of increasing the efficiency, but the strategy of connecting nodes with median betweenness with the support of min-cut was the most successful. All proposed strategies can be used to improve the efficiency of power networks. Furthermore, as these approaches are general, their application scope is not limited to power transmission lines.