A Bi-Level Stochastic Game Model for PMU Placement in Power Grid with Cybersecurity Risks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a bi-level stochastic game model for optimal PMU placement in power grids, balancing cost, observability, and cybersecurity risks, demonstrated on the IEEE-9 bus system.

Contribution

It presents a novel bi-level stochastic game approach for PMU placement that accounts for cyber-attack risks, optimizing deployment cost and network security.

Findings

9% reduction in deployment cost considering cyber-risks

Effective protection of PMUs against cyber-attacks demonstrated

Enhanced network observability with minimized PMU deployment

Abstract

Phasor measurement units (PMUs) provide accurate and high-fidelity measurements in order to monitor the state of the power grid and support various control and planning tasks. However, PMUs have a high installation cost prohibiting their massive deployment. Minimizing the number of installed PMUs needs to be achieved while also maintaining full observability of the network. At the same time, data integrity attacks on PMU measurements can cause mislead power system control and operation routines. In this paper, a bi-level stochastic non-cooperative game-based placement model is proposed for PMU allocation in the presence of cyber-attack risks. In the first level, the protection of individual PMU placed in a network is addressed, while considering the interaction between the grid operator and the attacker with respective resource constraints. In the second level, the attacker observes the placement of the PMUs and compromises them, with the aim of maximizing the state estimation error and reducing the observability of the network. The proposed technique is deployed in the IEEE-9 bus test system. The results demonstrate a 9% reduction in the cost incurred by the power grid operator for deploying PMUs while considering cyber-risks.