An Enhanced Energy Management System Including a Real-Time Load-Redistribution Threat Analysis Tool and Cyber-Physical SCED

Abstract

It is possible to launch undetectable load-redistribution (LR) attacks against power systems even in systems with protection schemes. Therefore, it is imperative to detect LR attacks in power systems and establish corrective actions to provide secure dispatch points. This paper develops a systematic real-time LR threat analysis (RTLRTA) tool to flag LR attacks and identify all affected transmission assets. Since attackers might introduce some forms of random strategies to create LR attacks, we introduce different optimization models to generate random LR attacks to determine accurate thresholds for our detection index and test the tool’s functionality. Additionally, based on an estimation for the actual loads in the post-attack stage, we design a set of physical line flow security constraints (PLFSCs) that can be added to the existing security-constrained economic dispatch (SCED) models. This leads to appropriate responses to the identified LR attacks and provides secure dispatch points. We generate multiple scenarios of LR attacks and random errors for different target lines in the 2383-bus Polish test system to validate our proposed methods’ accuracy and functionality in detecting LR attacks and responding to them.