Data Science Day @ Columbia University

<!--td {border: 1px solid #ccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}-->The development of algorithms for enhancing the resilience and efficiency of the power grid requires evaluation with topologies of real transmission networks. However, due to security reasons, such topologies and particularly the locations of the substations and lines are usually not publicly available. Therefore, we study the structural properties of the North American grids and present an algorithm for generating synthetic spatially embedded networks with similar properties to a given grid. The algorithm uses the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) for node density estimation and generates nodes with similar spatial distribution to the nodes in a given network. Then, it uses two procedures, which are inspired by the historical evolution of the grids, to connect the nodes. The algorithm has several tunable parameters that allow generating grids similar to any given grid. We apply it to the Western Interconnection (WI) and to grids that operate under the SERC Reliability Corporation (SERC) and the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council (FRCC), and show that the generated grids have similar structural and spatial properties to these grids. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to consider the spatial distribution of the nodes and lines and its importance in generating synthetic grids.