Placing monitoring devices in electric power networks modelled by block graphs

The problem of monitoring an electric power system by placing as few measurement devices in the system as possible is closely related to the well known vertex covering and dominating set problems in graphs (see SIAM J. Discrete Math. 15(4) (2002), 519-529). A set S of vertices is defined to be a power dominating set of a graph if every vertex and every edge in the system is monitored by the set S (following a set of rules for power system monitoring). The minimum cardinality of a power dominating set of a graph is its power domination number. We investigate the power domination number of a block graph.