Cyber-Attacks to Voltage Control Applications via Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control System

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the effect of cyber-attacks on voltage control via the Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control System. To address this problem, we model wide area voltage control as a dynamical system under the presence of an adversary that aims to disrupt the network's voltage and steer the system towards voltage collapse. Under this framework, we derive stealthy attack templates that aim to reveal the attack locations and timing that will be most effective on the power grid. From the perspective of defending the grid, the attack templates reveal the critical locations for the optimal distribution of resources to mitigate potential cyber-attacks. Alternatively, we derive stealthy attack templates based on power flow equations and the static mechanism of voltage collapse. The effectiveness of our proposed attack templates are validated through numerical examples.