Important Breakthrough to Help Secure Electrical Grid
“Because they have this superior capacity to exchange power, it’s very important to protect HVDC lines from being compromised. Once they’re compromised, it can cause large disturbances to the power system. In a worst case, it could even destabilize the power grid and cause widespread outages and blackouts,” said Chen.
A key platform for implementing wide-area control with HVDC comes from Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control (WAMPAC) platforms, which provide real-time data about grid operations.
“WAMPAC collects and synchronizes all the data streams to get more visibility over what’s happening across the entire grid. It allows us to develop a model to validate the actual behavior of an HVDC system or surrounding system. We can then screen the data and identify any abnormal signals or behaviors, and also differentiate if it’s a real failure or a cyberhack,” Chen said.
The framework spearheaded by the Argonne team focuses on common but sophisticated attacks that cannot always be detected by conventional cyberintrusion systems and firewalls. Kim outlined how it works: “We know that the interdependency of the grid systems means that when false data is injected it will cause chain reactions. The detection algorithm automatically discovers these chain reactions and converts them into a set of rules that can then be used to detect malicious data injections and trigger alarms.”
The Argonne researchers first tested their detection algorithm in the lab, using a large number of cases under various operating conditions, and achieved nearly 100% accuracy. Chen then traveled to the ABB U.S. Corporate Research Center in North Carolina, where Argonne’s detection technology was integrated into Hitachi ABB’s own real-time digital simulator testing bed. An attack was simulated on the test bed, which was successfully detected.
A final demonstration took place at the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) in Oregon, where Kim joined with all of the project partners to connect their technologies to a BPA replica station. Again, the overall demonstration was a success, showcasing an array of potential protections that could be made available for HVDC systems.
Reynaldo Nuqui, senior principal scientist at Hitachi ABB Power Grids, highlighted the lab’s contributions: “Argonne’s defense system is based on wider system information than is currently available for HVDC stations, so it provides more effective detection and mitigation of malicious external control commands. It effectively supplements our solutions to secure HVDC systems and the electrical grid as a whole.”
The algorithm could potentially transition to practice when asset owners and transmission operators require this important security feature. As for future efforts, both Chen and Kim agreed that when it comes to protecting the power grid from cyberattacks, particularly with new and emerging power technologies requiring additional safeguards, it’s not enough to have an IT-only approach.
“The unique angle our group brings is that we don’t look at cybersecurity from the IT perspective, we look at it from the power system perspective,” Kim said. “We have to assume our adversary is smart and will figure out how to get past IT protections and penetrate the system. At that point, we still have to be able to protect the power grid.”
