A Novel Four-Level Approach for Improving Power System Resilience Against Intentional Attacks

Abstract

This study proposes a new four-level model to enhance power system resilience against human attacks. The model considers human attacks, such as intelligent attackers and power system planners, as defenders. The attackers want to maximize the impacts of actions, while the defender tries to avoid imposed costs and damages due to budget limitations. To this end, a new four-level model defense-defense-attack-defense (DDAD) is proposed, in which a new defense layer is added to the common three-level model defense-attack-defense (DAD). Looking at the model more closely, new power plants and substations are added to the power system to improve its resilience, while the most important power plants and substations are determined. Subsequently, the conventional three-level model was applied. In this research, the defender and attacker have some strategies with their own costs for every power system component, such as power plants and substations, and their own interactions. The power system model includes the load, power plant and substation, and substation priority, which are defined as a combination of the value of the load and network topology. The proposed model was applied to the IEEE-30 bus test system, and the results indicated the effectiveness of the proposed method.