Theories of Explaining Causes of Large Scale Blackouts: Current Literature and a Future Research Framework

Abstract

Recently large scale blackouts have been a global issue to be addressed. Korea also faces highly unlikely but catastrophic large scale blackouts due to the complexity of its interconnected grid systems. There are different explanations on the causes of large scale blackouts in different fields. At first, therefore, this article categorizes them as techno-economic approaches and complex & network theories. The latter observe the cascading outage itself as a physical phenomenon independent of the social organization of technological events, while the former searches for the causes of large scale blackouts in the physical structure of interconnected transmission systems and market design. Because they do not deal with organizational and institutional problems in their explanations, this paper includes organizational & institutional approaches – Normal Accident theory, High Reliability Organizational theory, and New Institutionalism – to explain social causes of large scale blackouts. Finally, a theoretical framework is outlined that makes an attempt to synchronize different theories in different fields to show multi-dimensions of explaining large scale blackouts and to guide future policy direction.