Towards a Systematic Approach for Smart Grid Hazard Analysis and Experiment Specification

TL;DR

This paper proposes a systematic method combining hazard analysis and experiment design techniques to improve safety and reliability in smart grid systems, demonstrated through a voltage control case study.

Contribution

It introduces an integrated approach using STPA and HTD to systematically identify hazards and design experiments for smart grid safety analysis.

Findings

Effective hazard identification for smart grids

Structured experiment documentation process

Successful case study application

Abstract

The transition to the smart grid introduces complexity to the design and operation of electric power systems. This complexity has the potential to result in safety-related losses that are caused, for example, by unforeseen interactions between systems and cyber-attacks. Consequently, it is important to identify potential losses and their root causes, ideally during system design. This is non-trivial and requires a systematic approach. Furthermore, due to complexity, it may not possible to reason about the circumstances that could lead to a loss; in this case, experiments are required. In this work, we present how two complementary deductive approaches can be usefully integrated to address these concerns: Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) is a systems approach to identifying safety-related hazard scenarios; and the ERIGrid Holistic Test Description (HTD) provides a structured approach to refine and document experiments. The intention of combining these approaches is to enable a systematic approach to hazard analysis whose findings can be experimentally tested. We demonstrate the use of this approach with a reactive power voltage control case study for a low voltage distribution network.