We present a spectral analysis of a significant part of the Italian bulk power system. Spectral analysis applied to graphs is not a new tool, but analyses of the real world, especially of technological networks, currently are lacking. We show the spectral pattern of a high voltage power network, calculate the ratio between the smallest and largest non-zero Laplacian eigenvalue to check its synchronisability and calculate the epidemics threshold of a real HV power grid. We indicate the trade-off between sinchronisability and epidemic threshold as a major network design problem. Moreover, following Restrepo, Ott, Hunt, we propose the usage of the maximum eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix to assess a metric for the inter-dependency in the technological networks. Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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