  A reliable supply of electricity is critical for our modern society and any
large scale disturbance of the electrical system causes substantial costs. In
2015, one overloaded transmission line caused a cascading failure in the
Turkish power grid, affecting about 75 million people. Here, we analyze the
Turkish power grid and its dynamical and statistical properties. Specifically,
we propose, for the first time, a model that incorporates the dynamical
properties and the complex network topology of the Turkish power grid to
investigate cascading failures. We find that the network damage depends on the
load and generation distribution in the network with centralized generation
being more susceptible to failures than a decentralized one. Furthermore,
economic considerations on transmission line capacity are shown to conflict
with stability.
