As resources become scarce, large systems such as the electric power system in the United States tend to operate nearer to their security limits. There has been increasing evidence of this conjecture not only in the United States but world-wide. The crucial phenomena is embedded in the system dynamics and is not well understood. The manifestation of this operation is the increased frequency in breakdowns in the electric supply. This proposal seeks to research conceptual and computational tools to examine large-scale power system behavior near stability limits.
