Vulnerability of EV Charging Stations to Cyber Attacks Manipulating Prices

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) have experienced an unprecedented increase in their penetration; in well developed countries; due to the advancement of battery technology and the need to make transportation more environmentally friendly. As a result of this trend, EVs have become an integral part of those countries power grid ecosystem, where they may be used as both a source, and a consumer of energy. However, cybersecurity risks associated with large fleets of EVs within the power grids can significantly impact the normal operation of distribution systems. This paper considers the cyber-attack consequences, from attackers’ perspective. The cyber attackers under study target the charging price (CP) by increasing the CP in off-peak hours and accordingly subsiding it in on-peak hours. A two-stage optimization framework is proposed to identify the most important ultra-fast charging stations (XFCs) under the cyber-attack, meanwhile, the EV users’ response to the compromised CP is considered. Then, the proposed model is implemented on a modified IEEE 123-bus distribution test system, and the effectiveness of the model is proved through some case studies. In particular, they demonstrated that the amount of load shedding is increased by 8.198 MW when the EV user response is taken into account.