Mitigation of Cyber-Attacks on Wide-Area Under-Frequency Load-Shedding Schemes

This paper investigates the problem of cyber-attacks on Wide-Area Under-Frequency Load Shedding (WAUFLS), as these schemes are critical to maintaining power systems stability. First, we perform a detailed analysis on existing WAUFLS schemes and show that an adversary can launch a False Data Injection (FDI) cyberattack by manipulating the frequency measurements or Power Flow Measurements (PFMs), which may lead to system losses, unnecessary shedding of important loads, and system-wide blackout. Second, to address this vulnerability, we propose a novel Reliable States WAUFLS (RSLS) scheme to protect against FDI cyber-attacks. The disturbance calculation and load shedding process in RSLS are based on reliable system states, obtained using a proposed data-classification method on the PFMs that secures the state estimation operation. These reliable states are then used to perform the power flow in order to calculate the power mismatch. The calculated magnitude of disturbance, as well as the obtained system states, are used to decide on the amount and locations of the loadshedding. We validate the effectiveness and accuracy of RSLS by conducting extensive simulation on the IEEE-39 bus New England system using PSCAD/EMTDC. The results confirm the proposed scheme's capabilities in evaluating system disturbance and performing load-shedding, thus protecting the system during under-frequency conditions, and demonstrate its robustness against FDI attacks.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the problem of cyber-attacks on Wide-Area Under-Frequency Load Shedding (WAUFLS) schemes and proposes a novel Reliable States WAUFLS (RSLS) scheme to protect against False Data Injection (FDI) attacks. The proposed scheme uses reliable system states obtained using a data-classification method on the Power Flow Measurements (PFMs) to perform disturbance calculation and load shedding. Extensive simulations on the IEEE-39 bus New England system validate the effectiveness and robustness of the RSLS scheme in evaluating system disturbance and performing load-shedding.