Power grid upgrades may cause blackouts, warns Braess's paradox
Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - 07:32
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org)—In order to meet increasing energy demands, power companies have the option of adding new power lines to the existing grid. But in a new study, researchers have found that, contrary to common intuition, adding certain new power lines may cause power outages across the grid due to desynchronization. This finding is an example of Braess's paradox, which was originally discovered in traffic networks to show that adding a road to a congested traffic network may counterintuitively increase overall driving time. This study is the first time that Braess's paradox has been found in oscillator networks.