Prosumer site power interruption attacks: exploiting the reactive power control feature in smart inverters

Abstract

Increased adoption of distributed energy resources in the form of renewable energy sources (RESs) to handle the capacity expansion in the power distribution system (PDS) is a new paradigm. RESs being intermittent in nature, present operational issues that worsen with increasing RES penetration rate. An attractive approach for handling the intermittency is coordinated reactive power control (RPC) of the RESs in the PDS. RPC leverages on the reactive power capacity of the RES inverters and hence is a significantly cheaper option than the conventional solutions such as energy storage systems. Oversizing of inverters is considered to improve the robustness of RPC, however, malicious attackers may exploit the oversized capacity to strengthen their attacks. In this study, a demonstration of data integrity attacks launched against RPC and its impact on the availability of the power supply at the prosumer premises are presented. Validation for the attack using simulations and emulated experiments in a scaled-down power system test-bed is also presented. The analytical, simulation and experimental results illustrate the feasibility of tripping the circuit breaker at the prosumer site and causing power supply interruption. Finally, a defense mechanism is proposed to minimise the impacts and it is validated using MATLAB–SIMULINK simulations.