Enhancing synchronization stability in complex networks with probabilistic natural frequencies

Synchronization is crucial for different natural or artificial systems. In power grids, synchronization in the system is essential for stable electricity transmission. However, fluctuations in power supply and demand can destabilize synchronization, especially with the increasing deployment of renewable sources. In real-time applications, one can only access their probabilistic information in the near future. Hence the synchronization stability is no longer a well-defined value, and we need to minimize the tail of its distribution. Remarkably, we found that by optimizing the mean value of the synchronization stability, the variance is also reduced. Hence the load shedding scheme optimizing the mean stability is sufficient in the presence of probabilistic uncertainties of the natural frequencies. In addition, we introduce a vulnerability measure of individual nodes to demonstrate how the topology of the network affects the synchronization stability. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG.