On the Impact of Synchronization Attacks on Distributed and Cooperative Control in Microgrid Systems

Abstract

Microgrids are adopted to provide distributed generation of renewable energy resources and scalable integration of loads. To ensure the reliability of their power system operations, distributed and cooperative control schemes are proposed by integrating communication networks at their control layers. However, the information exchanged at the communication channels is vulnerable to malicious attacks aiming to introduce voltage instability and blackouts. In this paper, we design and evaluate a novel type of attacks on the cooperative control and communication layers in microgrids, where the attacker targets the communication links between distributed generators (DGs) and manipulates the reference voltage data exchanged by their controllers. We analyze the control-theoretic and detectability properties of this attack to assess its impact on reference voltage synchronization at the different control layers of a microgrid. Results from numerical simulation are presented to demonstrate this attack, and the maximum voltage deviation and inaccurate reference voltage synchronization it causes in the microgrid.

Detecting a Stealthy Attack in Distributed Control for Microgrids using Machine Learning Algorithms

“…Since the reference V * i+1 and the measurement of the previous node V s i have very close values and similar dynamics, the attacker could maliciously replace V * i+1 with V s i . This attack is naturally stealthy, and it can cause a severe impact on the voltage control stability as described in our previous work [10].…”

“…In this section, we detail our hardware platform [13] to emulate a microgrid system with the distributed and cooperative control system depicted in Section II. In the built hardware platform, we further implement a MitM attack to fulfill the MaR attack described in Section II.…”

“…In this section, we describe a distributed and cooperative control system of a microgrid and its threat model using the measurement-as-reference (MaR) attack that we have designed in [10].…”

“…In our previous work [10], we propose a distributed cooperative control scheme for microgrid voltage dynamics. As shown in Fig.…”

“…Based on this distributed and cooperative control model, a stealthy cyberattack named measurement as reference attack (MaR) that targets the communication links connecting each DG is considered. MaR attack can cause serious impact like system voltage fluctuation and reference synchronization errors, which is detailed in our previous work [10]. We build an experimental microgrid platform with Raspberry Pi and Arduino devices to realize a distributed and cooperative control system.…”