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Growing grid complexity and loading are increasing the risk of cascading failures and large-scale blackouts. Traditional reliability enhancement technologies offer only incremental improvements. Emerging technologies are limited by their complexity, and need for extensive real time analyses. A better solution is to segment the grid into ac sectors interconnected by HVDC links. In a segmented system simple preset HVDC controls respond to disturbances without assistance from operators or central control. Further, transfer capability is increased when intra-sector spinning reserve responds to frequency decay. Efficient market operation and management are enabled by the controllability of power flows between grid sectors.
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Clark et al. (2008) studied this question.
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