The modeling of cascading failure in power systems is difficult because ofthe many different mechanisms involved; no single model captures all of thesemechanisms. Understanding the relative importance of these different mechanismsis an important step in choosing which mechanisms need to be modeled forparticular types of cascading failure analysis. This work presents a dynamicsimulation model of both power networks and protection systems, which cansimulate a wider variety of cascading outage mechanisms, relative to existingquasi-steady state (QSS) models. The model allows one to test the impact ofdifferent load models and protections on cascading outage sizes. This paperdescribes each module of the developed dynamic model and demonstrates howdifferent mechanisms interact. In order to test the model we simulated a batchof randomly selected $N-2$ contingencies for several different static loadconfigurations, and found that the distribution of blackout sizes and eventlengths from the proposed dynamic simulator correlates well with historicaltrends. The results also show that load models have significant impacts on thecascading risks. This dynamic model was also compared against a QSS model basedon the dc power flow approximations; we find that the two models largely agree,but produce substantially different results for later stages of cascading.
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