Distributed energy resources and the application of AI, IoT, and blockchain in smart grids

Smart grid (SG), an evolving concept in the modern power infrastructure, enables the two-way flow of electricity and data between the peers within the electricity system networks (ESN) and its clusters. The self-healing capabilities of SG allow the peers to become active partakers in ESN. In general, the SG is intended to replace the fossil fuel-rich conventional grid with the distributed energy resources (DER) and pools numerous existing and emerging know-hows like information and digital communications technologies together to manage countless operations. With this, the SG will able to “detect, react, and pro-act” to changes in usage and address multiple issues, thereby ensuring timely grid operations. However, the “detect, react, and pro-act” features in DER-based SG can only be accomplished at the fullest level with the use of technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and the Blockchain (BC). The techniques associated with AI include fuzzy logic, knowledge-based systems, and neural networks. They have brought advances in controlling DER-based SG. The IoT and BC have also enabled various services like data sensing, data storage, secured, transparent, and traceable digital transactions among ESN peers and its clusters. These promising technologies have gone through fast technological evolution in the past decade, and their applications have increased rapidly in ESN. Hence, this study discusses the SG and applications of AI, IoT, and BC. First, a comprehensive survey of the DER, power electronics components and their control, electric vehicles (EVs) as load components, and communication and cybersecurity issues are carried out. Second, the role played by AI-based analytics, IoT components along with energy internet architecture, and the BC assistance in improving SG services are thoroughly discussed. This study revealed that AI, IoT, and BC provide automated services to peers by monitoring real-time information about the ESN, thereby enhancing reliability, availability, resilience, stability, security, and sustainability

Security Analysis of System Behaviour - From "Security by Design" to "Security at Runtime" -

The Internet today provides the environment for novel applications and processes which may evolve way beyond pre-planned scope and purpose. Security analysis is growing in complexity with the increase in functionality, connectivity, and dynamics of current electronic business processes. Technical processes within critical infrastructures also have to cope with these developments. To tackle the complexity of the security analysis, the application of models is becoming standard practice. However, model-based support for security analysis is not only needed in pre-operational phases but also during process execution, in order to provide situational security awareness at runtime. This cumulative thesis provides three major contributions to modelling methodology. Firstly, this thesis provides an approach for model-based analysis and verification of security and safety properties in order to support fault prevention and fault removal in system design or redesign. Furthermore, some construction principles for the design of well-behaved scalable systems are given. The second topic is the analysis of the exposition of vulnerabilities in the software components of networked systems to exploitation by internal or external threats. This kind of fault forecasting allows the security assessment of alternative system configurations and security policies. Validation and deployment of security policies that minimise the attack surface can now improve fault tolerance and mitigate the impact of successful attacks. Thirdly, the approach is extended to runtime applicability. An observing system monitors an event stream from the observed system with the aim to detect faults - deviations from the specified behaviour or security compliance violations - at runtime. Furthermore, knowledge about the expected behaviour given by an operational model is used to predict faults in the near future. Building on this, a holistic security management strategy is proposed. The architecture of the observing system is described and the applicability of model-based security analysis at runtime is demonstrated utilising processes from several industrial scenarios. The results of this cumulative thesis are provided by 19 selected peer-reviewed papers

Towards the next generation of smart grids: semantic and holonic multi-agent management of distributed energy resources

The energy landscape is experiencing accelerating change; centralized energy systems are being decarbonized, and transitioning towards distributed energy systems, facilitated by advances in power system management and information and communication technologies. This paper elaborates on these generations of energy systems by critically reviewing relevant authoritative literature. This includes a discussion of modern concepts such as ‘smart grid’, ‘microgrid’, ‘virtual power plant’ and ‘multi-energy system’, and the relationships between them, as well as the trends towards distributed intelligence and interoperability. Each of these emerging urban energy concepts holds merit when applied within a centralized grid paradigm, but very little research applies these approaches within the emerging energy landscape typified by a high penetration of distributed energy resources, prosumers (consumers and producers), interoperability, and big data. Given the ongoing boom in these fields, this will lead to new challenges and opportunities as the status-quo of energy systems changes dramatically. We argue that a new generation of holonic energy systems is required to orchestrate the interplay between these dense, diverse and distributed energy components. The paper therefore contributes a description of holonic energy systems and the implicit research required towards sustainability and resilience in the imminent energy landscape. This promotes the systemic features of autonomy, belonging, connectivity, diversity and emergence, and balances global and local system objectives, through adaptive control topologies and demand responsive energy management. Future research avenues are identified to support this transition regarding interoperability, secure distributed control and a system of systems approach

How to Think About Resilient Infrastructure Systems

abstract: Resilience is emerging as the preferred way to improve the protection of infrastructure systems beyond established risk management practices. Massive damages experienced during tragedies like Hurricane Katrina showed that risk analysis is incapable to prevent unforeseen infrastructure failures and shifted expert focus towards resilience to absorb and recover from adverse events. Recent, exponential growth in research is now producing consensus on how to think about infrastructure resilience centered on definitions and models from influential organizations like the US National Academy of Sciences. Despite widespread efforts, massive infrastructure failures in 2017 demonstrate that resilience is still not working, raising the question: Are the ways people think about resilience producing resilient infrastructure systems? This dissertation argues that established thinking harbors misconceptions about infrastructure systems that diminish attempts to improve their resilience. Widespread efforts based on the current canon focus on improving data analytics, establishing resilience goals, reducing failure probabilities, and measuring cascading losses. Unfortunately, none of these pursuits change the resilience of an infrastructure system, because none of them result in knowledge about how data is used, goals are set, or failures occur. Through the examination of each misconception, this dissertation results in practical, new approaches for infrastructure systems to respond to unforeseen failures via sensing, adapting, and anticipating processes. Specifically, infrastructure resilience is improved by sensing when data analytics include the modeler-in-the-loop, adapting to stress contexts by switching between multiple resilience strategies, and anticipating crisis coordination activities prior to experiencing a failure. Overall, results demonstrate that current resilience thinking needs to change because it does not differentiate resilience from risk. The majority of research thinks resilience is a property that a system has, like a noun, when resilience is really an action a system does, like a verb. Treating resilience as a noun only strengthens commitment to risk-based practices that do not protect infrastructure from unknown events. Instead, switching to thinking about resilience as a verb overcomes prevalent misconceptions about data, goals, systems, and failures, and may bring a necessary, radical change to the way infrastructure is protected in the future.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering 201

Critical infrastructure protection

Postgraduate seminar series with a title Critical Infrastructure Protection held at the Department of Military Technology of the National Defence University. This book is a collection of some of talks that were presented in the seminar. The papers address threat intelligence, a protection of critical supply chains, cyber security in the management of an electricity company, and privacy preserving data mining. This set of papers tries to give some insight to current issues of the critical infrastructure protection. The seminar has always made a publication of the papers but this has been an internal publication of the Finnish Defence Forces and has not hindered publication of the papers in international conferences. Publication of these papers in peer reviewed conferences has indeed been always the goal of the seminar, since it teaches writing conference level papers. We still hope that an internal publication in the department series is useful to the Finnish Defence Forces by offering an easy access to these papers

Resilient power grid for smart city

Modern power grid has a fundamental role in the operation of smart cities. However, high impact low probability extreme events bring severe challenges to the security of urban power grid. With an increasing focus on these threats, the resilience of urban power grid has become a prior topic for a modern smart city. A resilient power grid can resist, adapt to, and timely recover from disruptions. It has four characteristics, namely anticipation, absorption, adaptation, and recovery. This paper aims to systematically investigate the development of resilient power grid for smart city. Firstly, this paper makes a review on the high impact low probability extreme events categories that influence power grid, which can be divided into extreme weather and natural disaster, human-made malicious attacks, and social crisis. Then, resilience evaluation frameworks and quantification metrics are discussed. In addition, various existing resilience enhancement strategies, which are based on microgrids, active distribution networks, integrated and multi energy systems, distributed energy resources and flexible resources, cyber-physical systems, and some resilience enhancement methods, including probabilistic forecasting and analysis, artificial intelligence driven methods, and other cutting-edge technologies are summarized. Finally, this paper presents some further possible directions and developments for urban power grid resilience research, which focus on power-electronized urban distribution network, flexible distributed resource aggregation, cyber-physical-social systems, multi-energy systems, intelligent electrical transportation and artificial intelligence and Big Data technology

Knowledge systems for real experimentation by means of industrial automation cells

Comunicación presentada a las XXXIX Jornadas de Automática, celebradas en Badajoz del 5 al 7 de Septiembre de 2018 y organizada por la Universidad de Extremadura.En la actualidad, las amenazas hacia las infraestructuras críticas están consideradas por la UE (Unión Europea) así como por otros estamentos internacionales, uno de los riesgos más graves para la estabilidad de sus estados, afectando su disfuncionalidad gravemente a la economía y la sociedad. Ello se debe, específicamente, a que los avances constantes en las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones se trasladan a los Sistemas de Control Industrial (SCI) proporcionando una gran flexibilidad de interconexión gracias a su escalabilidad y a modelos con una conectividad cada vez más simple e intuitiva. El uso de las redes de comunicación hace que estos sistemas sean altamente vulnerables, ya que no fueron diseñados originalmente para este tipo de expansión o formas de comunicaciones. En sus orígenes fueron diseñados con el propósito principal de otorgar la máxima disponibilidad de procesos. Sin embargo, hoy en día, la disponibilidad sigue siendo su misión principal. En este trabajo, se presenta el sistema SICERCAI, el cual aporta nuevas capacidades de investigación, desarrollo, simulación y banco de pruebas del funcionamiento de estos sistemas. A su vez, otorga capacidades de anticipación del comportamiento de un sistema en producción industrial y, como consecuencia directa, altas capacidades de ciberresiliencia. Como es un sistema abierto a la interconexión, permite la construcción de Células de Automatización Industrial (CAI) con elementos de los diferentes fabricantes de componentes industriales, pudiéndose agregar al sistema SICERCAI para cubrir el 100% de las posibilidades arquitectónicas existentes en la industria actual. De esta manera se consiguen recrear entornos industriales de carácter híbrido, siendo este aspecto el que más se asemeja a la realidad en la industria.This work, by the development of the SIKERCIA system, provides new capacities of research, development, simulation and testing of the functioning of critical infrastructures, and the capacity of anticipating the behavior of a system in industrial production. At the same time, SIKERCIA provides high capacities of cyber-resilience and also describes the condition of maturity with regard to the cybersecurity of the services implemented in SIKERCIA and catalogued as essential. All the above is provided by a system that has been tested, analyzing industrial environments. As it is a system open to interconnection, it allows the construction of Industrial Automation Cells using industrial components from different manufacturers, which can be added to the SIKERCIA system to cover 100% of the existing architectural possibilities in the current industry.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Proyectos ENE2015-64914-C3-2-R y DPI2017-84259-C2-2-R.peerReviewe

Technological Elements behind the Renewable Energy Community: Current Status, Existing Gap, Necessity, and Future Perspective—Overview

The Renewable Energy Community (REC) in Europe promotes renewable energy sources (RESs), offering social, economic, and environmental benefits. This new entity could alter consumer energy relationships, requiring self-consumption, energy sharing, and full utilization of RESs. Modernizing energy systems within the REC requires addressing self-consumption, energy sharing, demand response, and energy management system initiatives. The paper discusses the role of decentralized energy systems, the scenarios of the REC concept and key aspects, and activities involving energy generation, energy consumption, energy storage systems, energy sharing, and EV technologies. Moreover, the present work highlights the research gap in the existing literature and the necessity of addressing the technological elements. It also highlights that there is no uniform architecture or model for the REC, like in the case of microgrids. Additionally, the present work emphasizes the role and importance of technological elements in RECs, suggesting future recommendations for EMS, DSM, data monitoring and analytics, communication systems, and the software or tools to ensure reliability, efficiency, economic, and environmental measures. The authors also highlight the crucial role of policymakers and relevant policies, which could help in implementing these technological elements and show the importance of the RECs for a sustainable energy shift and transition

A Security Architectural Pattern for Risk Management of Industry Control Systems within Critical National Infrastructure

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.SCADA and ICS security have been focusing on addressing issues such as vulnerability discovery and intrusion detection within critical national infrastructure. Less attention has been paid to architectural solutions to the cyber security risks from an information assurance perspective. Security controls are not always traced back to the business requirements. This paper presents a holistic end-to-end view of the requirements, medium to high severity risks and proposes a generic security architectural pattern to address them. The architectural pattern is developed based on the Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture (SABSA) top two layers, contextual and conceptual, which are responsible for understanding the business requirements and development of a concept architecture and strategy. Moreover, this research is motivated by industrial practices and has reflected the recent changes of GCHQ’s mission. This research also contributes to the SCADA/ICS risk assessment by deriving holistic sets of risk management and architectural design requirements for SCADA/ICS