False Relay Operation Attacks in Power Systems with High Renewables

TL;DR

This paper investigates how high renewable penetration in power systems increases vulnerability to false relay operations caused by false data injection attacks, emphasizing the role of system inertia and proposing a formal attack model.

Contribution

It models FRO attacks as a CSP and demonstrates how system inertia and parameters influence attack success in renewable-rich power grids.

Findings

Power grids with high renewables are more susceptible to FRO attacks.

System inertia significantly affects the success rate of FRO attacks.

Inertia of synchronous generators can mitigate FRO attack effectiveness.

Abstract

Load-generation balance and system inertia are essential for maintaining frequency in power systems. Power grids are equipped with Rate-of-Change-of Frequency (ROCOF) and Load Shedding (LS) relays in order to keep load-generation balance. With the increasing penetration of renewables, the inertia of the power grids is declining, which results in a faster drop in system frequency in case of load-generation imbalance. In this context, we analyze the feasibility of launching False Data Injection (FDI) in order to create False Relay Operations (FRO), which we refer to as FRO attack, in the power systems with high renewables. We model the frequency dynamics of the power systems and corresponding FDI attacks, including the impact of parameters, such as synchronous generators inertia, and governors time constant and droop, on the success of FRO attacks. We formalize the FRO attack as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) and solve using Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT). Our case studies show that power grids with renewables are more susceptible to FRO attacks and the inertia of synchronous generators plays a critical role in reducing the success of FRO attacks in the power grids.