The Impact of Ramp-Induced Data Attacks on Power System Operational Security

Abstract

This paper analyzes a malicious data attack in which the attacker targets at the generation side of the system and aims to compromise the system security by causing large power imbalance in the real-time operations. Such an attack is called the ramp-induced data (RID) attack in the literature which revealed that the attacker can manipulate the limits of generator ramp constraints in real-time dispatch (RTD) and, thus, impact the power market operations. In this paper, we propose an optimal attack model to analyze the impact of the RID attack on power system operational security and show that the attacker can introduce large power imbalance into real-time operations that can cause security issues or even catastrophic consequences. To address the risk of such an attack, a countermeasure is presented that reassesses the regulation reserve adequacy against a given risk level of the attack. Simulations on the IEEE 118-bus system verify the impact of the proposed RID attack and the effectiveness of the regulation assessment approach.