CYBERSECURITY ENABLED PROTECTION AND OPTIMIZATION OF ACTIVE DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS IN SMART GRIDS

Abstract

The electrical grid is evolving into smart grid with the integration of renewables and the evolution of advanced information and communication technology (ICT). This enables remote monitoring and control for operators in power system on the one hand, but on the other hand it has opened doors for attackers to intrude from cyberspace. Hence, there is a requirement of protection, optimization and cybersecurity of both conventional and smart grids. This work deals with the classical problem of conventional grid using modern optimization techniques and develops cybersecurity solution for smart grid communication protocols in active distribution networks. In a conventional grid, combined economic and emission dispatch is a classical problem which is tackled by particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithms and their comparison results are presented. Then the work deals with the optimal sizing of an independent renewable energy based system i.e. photovoltaic-wind turbine-battery energy storage system (PV-WT-BESS) using a novel technique called iterative filter selection approach and the results are compared with an existing technique in the literature. In smart grids domain, the vulnerabilities and countermeasures in electrical substations are reviewed. The work is then advanced on a standard microgrid and its communication protocols i.e. Generic Object Oriented Substation Events (GOOSE) and Sampled Measure Values (SMV or simply SV) are analyzed and exploited to provide a novel cybersecurity solution. The two communication protocols are based on the IEC-61850 standard and are used to control breakers through protection and control IEDs and collect sampled values of nodal currents and voltages through merging units respectively. Both GOOSE and SV are of primary importance in the IEC-61850 standard and are considered in our work both on communication and electrical levels to devise a hybrid and novel cybersecurity solution in both the information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) domain. The standard case considered in our work is a Banshee microgrid and its simulation, false data injection (FDI) attacks in the form of replay and masquerade attacks and then the novel cybersecurity methodology to counter such attacks are done in real time digital simulator (RTDS) in conjunction with a couple of open source tools.