Cybersecure Distributed Voltage Control of AC Microgrids

Abstract

In this paper, the cybersecurity of distributed secondary voltage control of AC microgrids is addressed. A resilient approach is proposed to mitigate the negative impacts of cyberthreats on the voltage and reactive power control of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). The proposed secondary voltage control is inspired by the resilient flocking of a mobile robot team. This approach utilizes a virtual time-varying communication graph in which the quality of the communication links is virtualized and determined based on the synchronization behavior of DERs. The utilized control protocols on DERs ensure that the connectivity of the virtual communication graph is above a specific resilience threshold. Once the resilience threshold is satisfied the Weighted Mean Subsequence Reduced (WMSR) algorithm is applied to satisfy voltage restoration in the presence of malicious adversaries. A typical microgrid test system including 6 DERs is simulated to verify the validity of proposed resilient control approach.