Structural Vulnerability Assessment of Multi-energy System Using a PageRank Algorithm

Severe natural catastrophes may directly cause large-scale cascading failures in energy systems. This paper presents a comprehensive scheme of vulnerability assessment for multi-energy systems, including both electricity and natural gas. Differing from cascading failure theory, this scheme employs PageRank algorithm to measure the structural importance of the integrated system. A modified weighted PageRank methodology is applied to determine the importance of nodes in both natural gas and electricity networks. The effectiveness of this scheme is demonstrated and analyzed via an integrated energy system in the case study. This algorithm can help identify the weakness in the integrate energy system so that purposeful planning and operation strategies can be deployed to increase the security.