Decentralized Outages Prevention: A Remedial Action Scheme for Cyberattacks Targeting Market Retailers in Smart Distribution Systems

This article proposes a framework as a remedial action scheme (RAS) for close to real-time system operation when system operator becomes aware of possibility of decentralized outages due to simultaneous attacks on several market retailers. The upper level of the framework is an offline RAS where system operator immediately implements a customized reconfiguration preventing the decentralized outages. Due to immediate implementation of upper-level reaction, it is possible to face decentralized congestions in the new topology having minimum reliance on the attacked market retailers. Since severity of congestions is less than that of outages, the lower level of the framework is implemented as an online RAS. In this level, eligible nonattacked market retailers are invited into a secondary market to compete for generation/consumption redispatch and contribute into alleviation of congestions with the purpose of increasing their income. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is validated on a well-known 136-bus distribution system.

Automated summary

This article proposes a framework for remedial action in the event of decentralized outages due to simultaneous attacks on several market retailers. The framework consists of offline and online levels, designed to alleviate congestion through reconfiguration and participation in secondary market competition.