Figure 3. Effects of load growth in synthetic networks.

Plot of the fraction f of tripped lines versus the relative load increase α mimicking the growth in power demand. Results are averaged over several (100) realizations of the networks for each size. Since each generated network experiences such a jump at a different critical value α_c, the resulting fs are averaged as a function of α − α_c. Error bars are of the order of the size of the symbols. Our results show that also in synthetic networks f has an abrupt jump consistent with the mean-field predictions for the model (see Methods).