Cyber attacks in smart grid – dynamic impacts, analyses and recommendations

Cyber attacks can cause cascading failures and blackouts in smart grids. Therefore, it is highly necessary to identify the types, impacts and solutions of cyber attacks to ensure the secure operation of power systems. As a well-known practice, steady-state analysis is commonly used to identify cyber attacks and provide effective solutions. However, it cannot fully cover non-linear behaviours and cascaded blackouts of the system caused by dynamic perturbations, as well as provide a post-disturbance operating point. This study presents a novel approach based on dynamic analysis that excludes the limitations of the steady-state analysis and can be used in the events of various cyber attacks. Four types of common attacks are reviewed, and their dynamic impacts are shown on the IEEE benchmark model of the Western System Coordinating Council system implemented in MATLAB Simulink. Then, recommendations are provided to enhance the security of the future smart power grids from the possible cyber attacks.