Leveraging Network Topology Optimization to Strengthen Power Grid Resilience Against Cyber-Physical Attacks

The contemporary power systems are facing a growing level of risks due to potential deliberate attacks by adversaries. Strengthening the resilience of power grids against malicious cyber-physical attacks is emerging as a critical task considering the importance of power systems to the entire society. In this article, a bilevel optimization model is developed to formulate the coordinated cyber-physical attacks against the power grids. In order to enhance the resilience of the power systems, a networked topology optimization (NTO) based model is proposed to mitigate the coordinated cyber-physical attacks. Resilience metrics are proposed to evaluate the power system resilience against the coordinated cyber-physical attacks. Case studies were conducted on the modified IEEE 57-bus and 118-bus systems to illustrate the impacts of coordinated cyber-physical attacks as well as validate the proposed NTO based approach. The results of the case studies show that the proposed NTO based mitigation strategy can effectively reduce the load loss of the power system under the coordinated cyber-physical attacks. The resilience of the system is improved by the proposed NTO based approach compared with the conventional optimal redispatch (OR) and optimal transmission switching (OTS) based remedial methods.

Automated summary

This article investigates the risks of cyber-physical attacks on power systems and proposes a network topology optimization-based approach to enhance system resilience. Case studies are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in mitigating coordinated attacks.