Smart Grid Communications: Overview of Research Challenges, Solutions, and Standardization Activities

Optimization of energy consumption in future intelligent energy networks (or Smart Grids) will be based on grid-integrated near-real-time communications between various grid elements in generation, transmission, distribution and loads. This paper discusses some of the challenges and opportunities of communications research in the areas of smart grid and smart metering. In particular, we focus on some of the key communications challenges for realizing interoperable and future-proof smart grid/metering networks, smart grid security and privacy, and how some of the existing networking technologies can be applied to energy management. Finally, we also discuss the coordinated standardization efforts in Europe to harmonize communications standards and protocols.Comment: To be published in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Cyber security of the smart grid: Attack exposure analysis, detection algorithms, and testbed evaluation

While smart grid technologies are deployed to help achieve improved grid resiliency and efficiency, they also present an increased dependency on cyber resources which may be vulnerable to attack. This dissertation introduces three components that provide new methods to enhancing the cyber security of the smart grid. First, a quantitative exposure analysis model is presented to assess risks inherited from the communication and computation of critical information. An attack exposure metric is then presented to provide a quantitative means to analyze the model. The metric\u27s utility is then demonstrated by analyzing smart grid environments to contrast the effectiveness of various protection mechanisms and to evaluate the impact of new cyber vulnerabilities. Second, a model-based intrusion detection system is introduced to identify attacks against electric grid substations. The system expands previous research to incorporate temporal and spatial analysis of substation control events in order to differentiate attacks from normal communications. This method also incorporates a hierarchical detection approach to improve correlation of physical system events and identify sophisticated coordinated attacks. Finally, the PowerCyber testbed is introduced as an accurate cyber-physical envi- ronment to help facilitate future smart grid cyber security research needs. The testbed implements a layered approach of control, communication, and power system layers while incorporating both industry standard components along with simulation and emulation techniques. The testbed\u27s efficacy is then evaluated by performing various cyber attacks and exploring their impact on physical grid simulations

Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte

Integrity and Privacy Protection for Cyber-physical Systems (CPS)

The present-day interoperable and interconnected cyber-physical systems (CPS) provides significant value in our daily lives with the incorporation of advanced technologies. Still, it also increases the exposure to many security privacy risks like (1) maliciously manipulating the CPS data and sensors to compromise the integrity of the system (2) launching internal/external cyber-physical attacks on the central controller dependent CPS systems to cause a single point of failure issues (3) running malicious data and query analytics on the CPS data to identify internal insights and use it for achieving financial incentive. Moreover, (CPS) data privacy protection during sharing, aggregating, and publishing has also become challenging nowadays because most of the existing CPS security and privacy solutions have drawbacks, like (a) lack of a proper vulnerability characterization model to accurately identify where privacy is needed, (b) ignoring data providers privacy preference, (c) using uniform privacy protection which may create inadequate privacy for some provider while overprotecting others.Therefore, to address these issues, the primary purpose of this thesis is to orchestrate the development of a decentralized, p2p connected data privacy preservation model to improve the CPS system's integrity against malicious attacks. In that regard, we adopt blockchain to facilitate a decentralized and highly secured system model for CPS with self-defensive capabilities. This proposed model will mitigate data manipulation attacks from malicious entities by introducing bloom filter-based fast CPS device identity validation and Merkle tree-based fast data verification. Finally, the blockchain consensus will help to keep consistency and eliminate malicious entities from the protection framework. Furthermore, to address the data privacy issues in CPS, we propose a personalized data privacy model by introducing a standard vulnerability profiling library (SVPL) to characterize and quantify the CPS vulnerabilities and identify the necessary privacy requirements. Based on this model, we present our personalized privacy framework (PDP) in which Laplace noise is added based on the individual node's selected privacy preferences. Finally, combining these two proposed methods, we demonstrate that the blockchain-based system model is scalable and fast enough for CPS data's integrity verification. Also, the proposed PDP model can attain better data privacy by eliminating the trade-off between privacy, utility, and risk of losing information

Enhancing Cyber-Resiliency of DER-based SmartGrid: A Survey

The rapid development of information and communications technology has enabled the use of digital-controlled and software-driven distributed energy resources (DERs) to improve the flexibility and efficiency of power supply, and support grid operations. However, this evolution also exposes geographically-dispersed DERs to cyber threats, including hardware and software vulnerabilities, communication issues, and personnel errors, etc. Therefore, enhancing the cyber-resiliency of DER-based smart grid - the ability to survive successful cyber intrusions - is becoming increasingly vital and has garnered significant attention from both industry and academia. In this survey, we aim to provide a systematical and comprehensive review regarding the cyber-resiliency enhancement (CRE) of DER-based smart grid. Firstly, an integrated threat modeling method is tailored for the hierarchical DER-based smart grid with special emphasis on vulnerability identification and impact analysis. Then, the defense-in-depth strategies encompassing prevention, detection, mitigation, and recovery are comprehensively surveyed, systematically classified, and rigorously compared. A CRE framework is subsequently proposed to incorporate the five key resiliency enablers. Finally, challenges and future directions are discussed in details. The overall aim of this survey is to demonstrate the development trend of CRE methods and motivate further efforts to improve the cyber-resiliency of DER-based smart grid.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid for Publication Consideratio

Threat Scenarios and Monitoring Requirements for Cyber-Physical Systems of Flexibility Markets

The ongoing integration of renewable generation and distributed energy resources introduces new challenges to distribution network operation. Due to the increasing volatility and uncertainty, distribution system operators (DSOs) are seeking concepts to enable more active management and control. Flexibility markets (FMs) offer a platform for economically efficient trading of electricity flexibility between DSOs and other participants. The integration of cyber, physical and market domains of multiple participants makes FMs a system of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). While cross-domain integration sets the foundation for efficient deployment of flexibility, it introduces new physical and cyber vulnerabilities to participants. This work systematically formulates threat scenarios for the CPSs of FMs, revealing several remaining security challenges across all domains. Based on the threat scenarios, unresolved monitoring requirements for secure participation of DSOs in FMs are identified, providing the basis for future works that address these gaps with new technical concepts.Comment: Published in the proceedings of the 2022 IEEE PES Generation, Transmission and Distribution Conference and Exposition - Latin America (IEEE PES GTD Latin America

Operational moving target defences for improved power system cyber-physical security

In this work, we examine how Moving Target Defences (MTDs) can be enhanced to circumvent intelligent false data injection (FDI) attacks against power systems. Initially, we show how, by implementing state-of-the-art topology learning techniques, we can commit full-knowledge-equivalent FDI attacks against static power systems with no prior system knowledge. We go on to explore how naive applications of topology change, as MTDs, can be countered by unsupervised learning-based FDI attacks and how MTDs can be combined with physical watermarking to enhance system resilience. A novel intelligent attack, which incorporates dimensionality reduction and density-based spatial clustering, is developed and shown to be effective in maintaining stealth in the presence of traditional MTD strategies. In resisting this new type of attack, a novel implementation of MTD is suggested. The implementation uses physical watermarking to drive detection of traditional and intelligent FDI attacks while remaining hidden to the attackers. Following this, we outline a cyber-physical authentication strategy for use against FDI attacks. An event-triggered MTD protocol is proposed at the physical layer to complement cyber-side enhancements. This protocol applies a distributed anomaly detection scheme based on Holt-Winters seasonal forecasting in combination with MTD implemented via inductance perturbation. To conclude, we developed a cyber-physical risk assessment framework for FDI attacks. Our assessment criteria combines a weighted graph model of the networks cyber vulnerabilities with a centralised residual-based assessment of the physical system with respect to MTD. This combined approach provides a cyber-physical assessment of FDI attacks which incorporates both the likelihood of intrusion and the prospect of an attacker making stealthy change once intruded.Open Acces

The role of communication systems in smart grids: Architectures, technical solutions and research challenges

The purpose of this survey is to present a critical overview of smart grid concepts, with a special focus on the role that communication, networking and middleware technologies will have in the transformation of existing electric power systems into smart grids. First of all we elaborate on the key technological, economical and societal drivers for the development of smart grids. By adopting a data-centric perspective we present a conceptual model of communication systems for smart grids, and we identify functional components, technologies, network topologies and communication services that are needed to support smart grid communications. Then, we introduce the fundamental research challenges in this field including communication reliability and timeliness, QoS support, data management services, and autonomic behaviors. Finally, we discuss the main solutions proposed in the literature for each of them, and we identify possible future research directions