Cyber Security of Smart-Grid Frequency Control: A Review and Vulnerability Assessment Framework

Abstract

Smart grid involves application of information and communication technology (ICT) for monitoring, protection, operation and control of interconnected power systems under various scenarios. Smart grid control (SGC) is an important aspect that is constantly subjected to various vulnerabilities, threats and attacks under central and distributed control architectures. Cybersecurity of SGC, especially, load frequency control (LFC), is an important issue that is addressed in this article. The state-of-the-art in cybersecurity and attacks on SGC and intensive literature review is discussed with a comprehensive list of references on LFC. The authors present a part of their own work carried out on a systematic vulnerability assessment (VA) framework that can be used to identify weak points in the LFC system. The proposed methodology is explained for VA of the standard 39-bus New England test system and the 96-bus reliability test system (RTS) to illustrate the concept of cybersecurity and VA of smart grid LFC.