Resumen: Cross-border electricity interconnections are important for ensuring energy exchange and addressing undesirable events such as power outages and blackouts. This paper assesses the performance of interconnection lines by measuring their impacts on the main reliability and vulnerability indicators of interconnected power systems. The reliability study is performed using the sequential Monte Carlo simulation technique, while the vulnerability assessment is carried out by proposing a cascading failures methodology. The conclusions obtained show that highly connected infrastructures have simultaneously high reliability and limited robustness, which suggests that both approaches show different operational characteristics of the power system. Nevertheless, an appropriate increase in the number and capacity of the interconnections can help to improve both security parameters of the power supply. Seven case studies are performed based on the IEEE RTS-96 test system. The results can be used to help transmission system operators better understand the behaviour and performance of electrical networks. Idioma: Inglés DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2020.106950 Año: 2020 Publicado en: Reliability Engineering and System Safety 201 (2020), 106950 [12 pp.] ISSN: 0951-8320 Factor impacto JCR: 6.188 (2020) Categ. JCR: OPERATIONS RESEARCH & MANAGEMENT SCIENCE rank: 11 / 84 = 0.131 (2020) - Q1 - T1 Categ. JCR: ENGINEERING, INDUSTRIAL rank: 11 / 49 = 0.224 (2020) - Q1 - T1 Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 1.76 - Applied Mathematics (Q1) - Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality (Q1) - Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (Q1)