ASCENT: Boosting Cyber and Physical Resilience of Power Electronics-Dominated Distribution Grids in Energy Space

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This NSF project aims to develop an innovative sensing and control system needed to enhance the cyber-physical resilience of power distribution systems with massive power electronics-interfaced resources (PERs), e.g., renewables, energy storage, and electric vehicles. The project will transform the ways of designing energy management systems of PERs. With the proposed system, the PERs will be capable of collaboratively providing reliable electricity services to their host grids under extreme weather-induced events. The system will also enable the PERs to self-detect cyber-attacks, and to take corrective actions. The above features will be achieved by explicitly modeling, monitoring, and controlling the interactions between PERs and their host grid in the energy space, and by watermarking their measurements via local renewable and load fluctuations. The intellectual merits include the following: 1) the project conceptualizes for the first time the co-design of cyber and physical resilient solutions for networked PERs in the energy space where the complexity of PER dynamics exhibited in a conventional space can be significantly reduced; 2) the proposed cyber-attack detector can differentiate cyber-attacks from large physical disturbances; 3) the microgrid simulation platform will be the first-of-its-kind, open-source, hardware-verified platform that will accelerate the innovation of clean energy technologies. The broader impacts include the following: 1) the project will catalyze the adoption of clean energy, and contribute towards improving energy equity by enabling PERs to power their distribution systems under extreme weather conditions. Disadvantaged communities who cannot afford their own solar panels or energy storage can enjoy reliable electricity services by this mechanism during extreme weather conditions; 2) it will educate the workforce, especially in Hispanic communities, by enriching power system education with topics on cyber resilience. It will also grow a talent pipeline by organizing Renewable Energy and Cybersecurity Summer Camps for K12 students.The project will be carried out in terms of three thrusts. Thrust 1 will conceptualize a system-aware, resilient controller for PERs. In Thrust 2, an interactive robust framework for cyber-attack detection will be designed by watermarking measurements of PERs in the energy space. In Thrust 3, both software-based-, and entirely-hardware-testbeds will be configured to test and validate the proposed algorithms. The scalability of the proposed methods on the test system will be tested via simulation studies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.