ICT Technologies, Standards and Protocols for Active Distribution Network Automation and Management

The concept of active distribution network (ADN) is evolved to address the high penetration of renewables in the distribution network. To leverage the benefits of ADN, effective communication and information technology is required. Various communication standards to facilitate standard-based communication in distribution network have been proposed in literature. This chapter presents various communication standards and technologies that can be employed in ADN. Among various communication standards, IEC 61850 standard has emerged as the de facto standard for power utility automation. IEC 61850-based information modeling for ADN entities has also been presented in this chapter. To evaluate the performance of ADN communication architecture, performance metrics and performance evaluation tools have also been presented in this chapter

Smart Grid for the Smart City

Modern cities are embracing cutting-edge technologies to improve the services they offer to the citizens from traffic control to the reduction of greenhouse gases and energy provisioning. In this chapter, we look at the energy sector advocating how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and signal processing techniques can be integrated into next generation power grids for an increased effectiveness in terms of: electrical stability, distribution, improved communication security, energy production, and utilization. In particular, we deliberate about the use of these techniques within new demand response paradigms, where communities of prosumers (e.g., households, generating part of their electricity consumption) contribute to the satisfaction of the energy demand through load balancing and peak shaving. Our discussion also covers the use of big data analytics for demand response and serious games as a tool to promote energy-efficient behaviors from end users

Cyber Physical System Security — DoS Attacks on Synchrophasor Networks in the Smart Grid

With the rapid increase of network-enabled sensors, switches, and relays, cyber-physical system security in the smart grid has become important. The smart grid operation demands reliable communication. Existing encryption technologies ensures the authenticity of delivered messages. However, commonly applied technologies are not able to prevent the delay or drop of smart grid communication messages. In this dissertation, the author focuses on the network security vulnerabilities in synchrophasor network and their mitigation methods. Side-channel vulnerabilities of the synchrophasor network are identified. Synchrophasor network is one of the most important technologies in the smart grid transmission system. Experiments presented in this dissertation shows that a DoS attack that exploits the side-channel vulnerability against the synchrophasor network can lead to the power system in stability. Side-channel analysis extracts information by observing implementation artifacts without knowing the actual meaning of the information. Synchrophasor network consist of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) use synchrophasor protocol to transmit measurement data. Two side-channels are discovered in the synchrophasor protocol. Side-channel analysis based Denial of Service (DoS) attacks differentiate the source of multiple PMU data streams within an encrypted tunnel and only drop selected PMU data streams. Simulations on a power system shows that, without any countermeasure, a power system can be subverted after an attack. Then, mitigation methods from both the network and power grid perspectives are carried out. From the perspective of network security study, side-channel analysis, and protocol transformation has the potential to assist the PMU communication to evade attacks lead with protocol identifications. From the perspective of power grid control study, to mitigate PMU DoS attacks, Cellular Computational Network (CCN) prediction of PMU data is studied and used to implement a Virtual Synchrophasor Network (VSN), which learns and mimics the behaviors of an objective power grid. The data from VSN is used by the Automatic Generation Controllers (AGCs) when the PMU packets are disrupted by DoS attacks. Real-time experimental results show the CCN based VSN effectively inferred the missing data and mitigated the negative impacts of DoS attacks. In this study, industry-standard hardware PMUs and Real-Time Digital Power System Simulator (RTDS) are used to build experimental environments that are as close to actual production as possible for this research. The above-mentioned attack and mitigation methods are also tested on the Internet. Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack of PMU traffic is performed with Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking. A side-channel analysis based MITM attack detection method is also investigated. A game theory analysis is performed to give a broade

Survey on synchrophasor data quality and cybersecurity challenges, and evaluation of their interdependencies

Synchrophasor devices guarantee situation awareness for real-time monitoring and operational visibility of smart grid. With their widespread implementation, significant challenges have emerged, especially in communication, data quality and cybersecurity. The existing literature treats these challenges as separate problems, when in reality, they have a complex interplay. This paper conducts a comprehensive review of quality and cybersecurity challenges for synchrophasors, and identifies the interdependencies between them. It also summarizes different methods used to evaluate the dependency and surveys how quality checking methods can be used to detect potential cyberattacks. This paper serves as a starting point for researchers entering the fields of synchrophasor data analytics and security

An Edge-based Architecture for Phasor Measurements in Smart Grids

This paper investigates the application of Kubernetes and Edge computing technologies to operate IT services in the context of power systems and smart grids. Traditional services for grid monitoring such as Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and Phasor Data Concentrators (PDCs) require a centralized architecture and a rigid networking infrastructure in order to properly function, which today is only achieved at the High Voltage (HV) transmission level. Furthermore, manual intervention is often the only option for PMUs/PDCs maintenance. In this work, the traditional PMU/PDC services were deployed as docker-containers in a decentralized Kubernetes cluster, which can represent any kind of geographically dispersed TCP/IP network. By leveraging remote orchestration, several key benefits are achieved: (1) no manual reconfiguration of the PMU-PDC communications upon network reconfiguration, (2) automatic PMU traffic redirection in case of PDC service redeployment in a different location, and (3) reduced data-loss upon PDC failure and enhanced overall system resiliency due to minimized ICT services down-time

An Information-Centric Communication Infrastructure for Real-Time State Estimation of Active Distribution Networks

© 2010-2012 IEEE.The evolution toward emerging active distribution networks (ADNs) can be realized via a real-time state estimation (RTSE) application facilitated by the use of phasor measurement units (PMUs). A critical challenge in deploying PMU-based RTSE applications at large scale is the lack of a scalable and flexible communication infrastructure for the timely (i.e., sub-second) delivery of the high volume of synchronized and continuous synchrophasor measurements. We address this challenge by introducing a communication platform called C-DAX based on the information-centric networking (ICN) concept. With a topic-based publish-subscribe engine that decouples data producers and consumers in time and space, C-DAX enables efficient synchrophasor measurement delivery, as well as flexible and scalable (re)configuration of PMU data communication for seamless full observability of power conditions in complex and dynamic scenarios. Based on the derived set of requirements for supporting PMU-based RTSE in ADNs, we design the ICN-based C-DAX communication platform, together with a joint optimized physical network resource provisioning strategy, in order to enable the agile PMU data communications in near real-time. In this paper, C-DAX is validated via a field trial implementation deployed over a sample feeder in a real-distribution network; it is also evaluated through simulation-based experiments using a large set of real medium voltage grid topologies currently operating live in The Netherlands. This is the first work that applies emerging communication paradigms, such as ICN, to smart grids while maintaining the required hard real-time data delivery as demonstrated through field trials at national scale. As such, it aims to become a blueprint for the application of ICN-based general purpose communication platforms to ADNs