Saving Nine Without Stitching in Time: Integrity Check After-the-fact

Electrical substations transform voltage from high to low, or low to high for distribution and transmission, respectively, and are a critical part of our electricity infrastructure. The state of a substation is continuously measured for monitoring, controlling and protection purposes, using synchrophasor measurements. The IEC 61850 standard defines communication protocols for electrical substations, including transmission of synchrophasor measurements. However, IEC 61850 does not properly address cyber security, leaving this critical infrastructure highly vulnerable to cyber attacks. This paper describes the development and testing of a novel mechanism for delayed integrity check for synchrophasor measurements. The results show that the solution manages to detect when integrity of the synchrophasor transmission is compromised, without adding any delay to the time-critical synchrophasor transmission itself.acceptedVersio

Saving Nine Without Stitching in Time: Integrity Check After-the-fact

Electrical substations transform voltage from high to low, or low to high for distribution and transmission, respectively, and are a critical part of our electricity infrastructure. The state of a substation is continuously measured for monitoring, controlling and protection purposes, using synchrophasor measurements. The IEC 61850 standard defines communication protocols for electrical substations, including transmission of synchrophasor measurements. However, IEC 61850 does not properly address cyber security, leaving this critical infrastructure highly vulnerable to cyber attacks. This paper describes the development and testing of a novel mechanism for delayed integrity check for synchrophasor measurements. The results show that the solution manages to detect when integrity of the synchrophasor transmission is compromised, without adding any delay to the time-critical synchrophasor transmission itself.acceptedVersio

Data Analytics and Wide-Area Visualization Associated with Power Systems Using Phasor Measurements

As power system research becomes more data-driven, this study presents a framework for the analysis and visualization of phasor measurement unit (PMU) data obtained from large, interconnected systems. The proposed framework has been implemented in three steps: (a) large-scale, synthetic PMU data generation: conducted to generate research-based measurements with the inclusion of features associated with industry-grade PMU data; (b) error and event detection: conducted to assess risk levels and data accuracy of phasor measurements, and furthermore search for system events or disturbances; (c) oscillation mode visualization: conducted to present wide-area, modal information associated with large-scale power grids. To address the challenges due to real data confidentiality, the creation of realistic, synthetic PMU measurements is proposed for research use. First, data error propagation models are generated after a study of some of the issues associated with the unique time-synchronization feature of PMUs. An analysis of some of the features of real PMU data is performed to extract some of the statistics associated with data errors. Afterwards, an approach which leverages on existing, large-scale, synthetic networks to model the constantly-changing dynamics often observed in real measurements is used to generate an initial synthetic dataset. Further inclusion of PMU-related data anomalies ensures the production of realistic, synthetic measurements fit for research purposes. An application of different techniques based on a moving-window approach is suggested for use in the detection of events in real and synthetic PMU measurements. These fast methods rely on smaller time-windows to assess fewer measurement samples for events, classify disturbances into global or local events, and detect unreliable measurement sources. For large-scale power grids with complex dynamics, a distributed error analysis is proposed for the isolation of local dynamics prior any reliability assessment of PMU-obtained measurements. Finally, fundamental system dynamics which are inherent in complex, interconnected power systems are made apparent through a wide-area visualization of large-scale, electric grid oscillation modes. The approach ensures a holistic interpretation of modal information given that large amounts of modal data are often generated in these complex systems irrespective of the technique that is used