Reliability Impacts of ICT Failures on Synchrophasor Based Dynamic Thermal Rating System

Abstract

The addition of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Infrastructure has made the cyber power network more intelligent and efficient. This improves reliability and sustainability by incorporating intelligent infrastructure such as phasor measurement units (PMUs), smart sensors, that aids two-way communication, provides monitoring features amongst other vast benefits. The deployment of these technologies, such as dynamic thermal rating systems (DTR), system integrity protection schemes (SIPS), demand-side management (DSM), has advantages. However, they have certain drawbacks such as component and communication network failures as well as cyber intrusions which can worsen the reliability of the existing network. This study presents a DTR system that incorporates Wide Area Monitoring (WAM) functions by using PMUs and examines ICT contingencies impact on cyber-physical network reliability. The paper proposes a Monte Carlo simulation approach to explore the consequences of ICT component failures on system-wide indices, and this approach is analyzed on the IEEE RTS which is modified to demonstrate the benefits of ICTs further. The findings indicate that reliability improves significantly with the use of PMUs, but failures of such components also have negative impacts on network reliability.