Power-functional network.

Power grids and their properties have been studied broadly in many aspects. In this paper, we propose a novel concept, power-flow-based power grid, as a typical power-functional network, based on the calculation of power flow distribution from power electrical engineering. We compare it with structural networks based on the shortest path length and effective networks based on the effective electrical distance and study the relationship among these three kinds of networks. We find that they have roughly positive correlations with each other, indicating that in general any close nodes in the topological structure are actually connected in function. However, we do observe some counter-examples that two close nodes in a structural network can have a long distance in a power-functional network, namely, two physically connected nodes can actually be separated in function. In addition, we find that power grids in the structural network tend to be heterogeneous, whereas those in the effective and power-functional networks tend to be homogeneous. These findings are expected to be significant not only for power grids but also for various other complex networks.