Cyber Attacks on Power System Automation and Protection and Impact Analysis

Cyber Attacks on Power System Automation and Protection and Impact Analysis

Subramaniam Rajkumar, Vetrivel (TU Delft Intelligent Electrical Power Grids)
Tealane, M. (Talinn University of Technology)
Stefanov, Alexandru (TU Delft Intelligent Electrical Power Grids)
Presekal, A. (TU Delft Intelligent Electrical Power Grids)
Palensky, P. (TU Delft Intelligent Electrical Power Grids)

2020

Power system automation and communication standards are spearheading the power system transition towards a smart grid. IEC 61850 is one such standard, which is widely used for substation automation and protection. It enables real-time communication and data exchange between critical substation automation and protection devices within digital substations. However, IEC 61850 is not cyber secure. In this paper, we demonstrate the dangerous implications of not securing IEC 61850 standard. Cyber attacks may exploit the vulnerabilities of the Sampled Values (SV) and Generic Object-Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) protocols of IEC 61850. The cyber attacks may be realised by injecting spoofed SV and GOOSE data frames into the substation communication network at the bay level. We demonstrate that such cyber attacks may lead to obstruction or tripping of multiple protective relays. Coordinated cyber attacks against the protection system in digital substations may cause generation and line disconnections, triggering cascading failures in the power grid. This may eventually result in a partial or complete blackout. The attack model, impact on system dynamics and cascading failures are veri ed experimentally through a proposed cyber-physical experimental framework that closely resembles real-world conditions within a digital substation, including Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) and protection schemes. It is implemented through Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulations of commercial relays with a Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS).

Blackout
Cascading failures
Cyber attacks
Cyber security
IEC 61850
Power system protection

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:660b7aa5-3526-4396-a6ca-d40451f4743f

https://doi.org/10.1109/ISGT-Europe47291.2020.9248840

IEEE

2021-12-22

978-1-7281-7101-2

Proceedings of 2020 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe, ISGT-Europe 2020: Proceedings

10th IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe, ISGT-Europe 2020, 2020-10-26 → 2020-10-28, Virtual/online event due to COVID-19, Delft, Netherlands

IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference Europe, 2020-October

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2020 Vetrivel Subramaniam Rajkumar, M. Tealane, Alexandru Stefanov, A. Presekal, P. Palensky