CAREER: Fundamental Security-Performance Tradeoffs in Power Grids

随着信息技术的进步、电网物理层与网络层互操作性的增强、能源市场监管的放松，电力行业正在发生深刻变革。在这种转型的推动下，电网的规模、复杂性和互联性正在迅速增长，并向互联平台的分布式网络发展。这种高度分布式的结构使电网暴露在关键的安全漏洞之下，因此，恶意的攻击者倾向于破坏电网的运行，从而严重破坏能源的产生、传输和分配。本提案的总体目标是开发一种决策理论方法，将安全性作为电网设计机制的一个组成部分，从而实现固有的安全运行。支持本研究的主要动机是当前电网的监测、保护和控制功能在设计时没有考虑到固有的安全性，并且在发现安全漏洞时进行处理。因此，虽然它们可以有效应对自然发生的故障和已知结构的攻击，但它们缺乏应对高度结构化和未知网络攻击的多功能性。本研究产生了一个决策理论框架，该框架将安全保证作为设计和优化监测和控制模块的约束，同时采用针对对手的现实模型，并结合生成、传输和操作约束。该框架有助于分析在设计监视和控制模块中的任何操作时涉及的三个关键措施之间的权衡，即：(i)安全保证，（ii）操作质量（通过分配与操作目标相匹配的适当性能措施），以及（iii）实时和可扩展实施的适应性。这些分析结果指导了未来电网安全监测和保护的转型方法。这些方法与现有的设计相反，现有的设计针对无攻击设置进行了优化，并通过额外的模块进行了增强，以增强其对已知类型网络攻击的弹性。用于解决这些问题的方法包括数理统计、统计信号处理、优化理论和电力工程。本研究的教育部分由几个部分组成，针对从高中到研究生水平的学生，以及几个人口统计数据。与伦斯勒大学的工程大使项目合作，该研究项目为高中生开发了关于现代网络安全概念的互动演示，其中包括本科生作为助理进行这些演示，他们也将参与研究。其他教育组成部分包括设计关于现代数据科学在电网中的应用的研究生课程教材。

The electric power industry is undergoing profound transformations due to the advances in information technology, stronger interoperability between the physical and cyber layers of the power grid, and deregulations in the energy market. Driven by such transformations, power grids are rapidly growing in scale, complexity, and interconnectivity, evolving towards distributed networks of interconnected platforms. Such highly distributed structures expose the power grid to critical security vulnerabilities, such that malicious attackers bent on subverting grid operations can severely disrupt energy generation, transmission, and distribution. The overarching goal of this proposal is to develop a decision-theoretic approach that includes security as an integral part of design mechanisms in power grids, rendering inherently secure operations.The key motivation underpinning this research is that current monitoring, protection, and control functions in power grid are designed without regard for inherent security, and security vulnerabilities are addressed as they are discovered. Therefore, while being effective against naturally occurring faults and attacks with known structures, they lack the versatility to counter highly structured and unknown cyber attacks. This research produces a decision-theoretic framework that integrates security assurance as a constraint in designing and optimizing monitoring and control modules while adopting realistic models for adversaries, and incorporating generation, transmission, and operational constraints. This framework facilitates analyzing the tradeoffs among three key measures involved in designing any operation in monitoring and control modules, namely: (i) security guarantees, (ii) quality the operation (through assigning appropriate performance measures that match the goals of the operations), and (iii) amenability to real-time and scalable implementation. These analytical results guide transformational approaches to secure monitoring and protection in future energy grids. These approaches are in contrast to the existing designs in which operations are optimized for attack-free settings, and are augmented by additional modules to enhance their resiliency against known classes of cyber attacks. The methods used to address these problems include mathematical statistics, statistical signal processing, optimization theory, and power engineering.The educational component of this research is composed of several parts aimed at students ranging from the high school to graduate level, and from several demographics. In collaboration with the Engineering Ambassadors program at Rensselaer, this research program develops interactive presentations for high-school students about modern notions of cyber security, which involve undergraduate students as assistants in delivering these presentations, who will be also involved in research. Other educational components include designing curricular materials for graduate courses on the applications of modern data science in power grids.