Transactive Energy to Thwart Load Altering Attacks on Power Distribution Systems

Samuel Yankson and Mahdi Ghamkhari
Additional contact information
Samuel Yankson: EECE Department, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504, USA
Mahdi Ghamkhari: EECE Department, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504, USA

Future Internet, 2019, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: The automatic generation control mechanism in power generators comes into operation whenever an over-supply or under-supply of energy occurs in the power grid. It has been shown that the automatic generation control mechanism is highly vulnerable to load altering attacks. In this type of attack, the power consumption of multiple electric loads in power distribution systems is remotely altered by cyber attackers in such a way that the automatic generation control mechanism is disrupted and is hindered from performing its pivotal role. The existing literature on load altering attacks has studied implementation, detection, and location identification of these attacks. However, no prior work has ever studied design of an attack-thwarting system that can counter load altering attacks, once they are detected in the power grid. This paper addresses the above shortcoming by proposing an attack-thwarting system for countering load altering attacks. The proposed system is based on provoking real-time adjustment in power consumption of the flexible loads in response to the frequency disturbances caused by the load altering attacks. To make the adjustments in-proportion to the frequency disturbances, the proposed attack-thwarting system uses a transactive energy framework to establish a coordination between the flexible loads and the power grid operator.

Keywords: load altering attacks; automatic generation control; frequency disturbances; transactive energy; attack thwarting system; cyber security; power distribution systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/12/1/4/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/12/1/4/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jftint:v:12:y:2019:i:1:p:4-:d:301440

Access Statistics for this article

Future Internet is currently edited by Ms. Grace You

More articles in Future Internet from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().