CAREER: Cyber-Physical Situational Awareness for the Power Grid Infrastructures

在大规模互连和地方社区规模上实现电力输送系统现代化的全球倡议，通过使用先进的信息（网络）和电能（物理）基础设施，有望提高可靠性，效率和可持续性。然而，电网对信息系统和技术的日益依赖对其意识到意外事件并相应地从意外事件中恢复的能力提出了挑战。 这是因为网格操作中的传统态势感知范式到目前为止仅限于物理网格层的事件和突发事件。这种限制的一个生动例子是最近对乌克兰电网的网络攻击，电网运营商看不到的网络入侵导致断路器未经授权跳闸，从而造成大面积停电。为了解决这一现状，该CAREER项目的目标是为电网运营商提供更好的工具来监控底层网络状态，特别是关注网络层的运营质量和安全性。它的成功完成将通过提供网络和物理资产的集成态势感知能力来改变电网运营模式，从而实现更高效，安全和弹性的电网基础设施。 这个CAREER项目的总体目标是开发一套改进的态势感知工具，可以无缝地连接当今电力输送基础设施的网络物理层。在批量传输层面，我们建议振兴传统能源控制中心系统的设计，特别是拓扑处理和安全分析模块，以共同推断网络物理运行状态，并有效地评估潜在的网络物理突发事件的安全影响。至于小占地面积的微电网，我们建议调查的灵活性和脆弱性之间的权衡集中式和分布式体系结构中存在的网络入侵通信链路。我们的研究计划包括三个有凝聚力的推力：T1）最优拓扑推理和网络状态估计使用大量的网络物理数据; T2）实时网络物理动态安全评估通过开发“网络应急分布因子”和无模型稳定性分析方法;和T3）分布式微电网运行下的网络物理干扰和对策设计。该职业发展计划还将通过以下方式将教育计划与研究目标相结合：i）开发适合大学预科学生的网络物理网格可视化学习平台，ii）将网络方面的课程项目和专题引入大学水平的电力工程课程，iii）促进本科生研究经验，特别是女性和代表性不足的工程专业学生。

Worldwide initiatives to modernize the electricity delivery systems, at both the bulk interconnection and local community scales, promise increased reliability, efficiency, and sustainability through the use of advanced information (cyber) and electrical energy (physical) infrastructure. The power grid's increasing dependence on information systems and technologies however challenges its capability to become aware of and accordingly recover from unexpected incidents. This is because the traditional situational awareness paradigm in grid operations has so far limited to events and contingencies at the physical grid layer. A vivid example of this limitation is the recent cyber-attacks to the Ukrainian power grid, where cyber intrusions invisible to grid operators caused unauthorized tripping of circuit breakers and thereby wide-area blackouts. To address this status quo, the objective of this CAREER project is to equip grid operators with better tools to monitor the underlying cyber-states, particularly focusing on the operational quality and security of the cyber layer. Its successful completion will transform the grid operational paradigm by providing integrated situational awareness capabilities of both cyber and physical assets, towards more efficient, secure, and resilient power gird infrastructures. The overarching goal of this CAREER project is to develop a suite of improved situational awareness tools that can seamlessly bridge the cyber-physical layers of today's electricity delivery infrastructures. At the bulk transmission level, we propose to revitalize the design of traditional energy control center systems, in particular the topology processing and security analysis modules, to jointly infer the cyber-physical operating states and to efficiently evaluate the security impacts of potential cyber-physical contingencies. As for small-footprint microgrids, we propose to investigate the flexibility and vulnerability trade-offs between centralized and distributed architectures in the presence of cyber-intrusions to communication links. Our research plan consists of three cohesive thrusts: T1) Optimal topology inference and cyber state estimation using a multitude of cyber-physical data; T2) Real-time cyber-physical dynamic security assessment by developing the 'cyber-contingency distribution factors' and model-free stability analysis methods; and T3) Distributed microgrid operations under cyber-physical disturbances and countermeasure designs. This CAREER development plan will also integrate an education plan with the research goals by i) developing a learning platform with cyber-physical grid visualization that is appropriate for pre-college students, ii) introducing course projects and special topics on the cyber aspects to college-level power engineering curricula, and iii) promoting undergraduate research experience especially for female and under-represented engineering students.