Stealthy Data Integrity Attacks Against Grid-tied Photovoltaic Systems

Abstract

Under the transformation of electric grid towards sustainability and decarbonization, a large number of distributed energy resources including solar photovoltaic (PV) farms are expected to penetrate the grid. As one of the critical state infrastructures, the cybersecurity of PV systems has attracted numerous attention especially with the standardization of grid support services. Various data-driven and model-based intrusion detection systems (IDSs) have emerged for the cybersecurity issue of grid-tied PV systems, among which the stealthy data integrity attacks (DIA) are rarely mentioned. In this paper, we propose a generation scheme of stealthy DIAs, which can bypass two recently proposed (almost state-of-the-art) data-driven and model-based IDSs simultaneously. The attack stealthiness is guaranteed by compromising the sensor measurements cooperatively conforming the physical dynamics of the grid-tied PV system, and meanwhile the attack vector needs to change with an imperceptible speed to avoid steep and observable increase/decrease. Systematical HIL experiments are conducted to verify the stealthiness of the designed stealthy DIA and evaluate its attack impact on PCC voltages.