Causes of the 2003 Major Grid Blackouts in North America and Europe, and Recommended Means to Improve System Dynamic Performance

On August 14, 2003, a cascading outage of transmission and generation facilities in the North American Eastern Interconnection resulted in a blackout of most of New York state as well as parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. On September 23, 2003, nearly four million customers lost power in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden following a cascading outage that struck Scandinavia. Days later, a cascading outage between Italy and the rest of central Europe left most of Italy in darkness on September 28. These major blackouts are among the worst power system failures in the last few decades. The Power System Stability and Power System Stability Controls Subcommittees of the IEEE PES Power…