Load balancing of renewable energy: a cyber security analysis

Abstract

Background: In the coming years, the increase of automation in electricity distribution grids, controlled by ICT, will bring major consequences to the cyber security posture of the grids. Automation plays an especially important role in load balancing of renewable energy where distributed generation is balanced to load in a way that the grid stability is ensured. Threats to the load balancing and the smart grid in general arise from the activities of misbehaving or rouge actors in combination with poor design, implementation, or configuration of the system that makes it vulnerable. It is urgent to conduct an in-depth analysis about the feasibility and imminency of these potential threats ahead of a cyber catastrophy. This paper presents a cyber security evaluation of the ICT part of the smart grid with a focus on load balancing of renewable energy. Method: The work builds on a load balancing centered smart grid reference architecture model that is designed as part of the evaluation with the help of SCADA system and smart grid experts. The smart grid load balancing architecture represented by the model is then analyzed using a threat modelling approach that is encapsulated in a tool called securiCAD. Countermeasures are introduced in the model to measure how much each improve the cyber security of the smart grid.

A Systematic Literature Review of Information Sources for Threat Modeling in the Power Systems Domain

“…This might make it difficult to model larger systems. This limitation was mentioned by [ 41 ]. In addition, they mentioned two other limitations.…”

“…Some articles use expert knowledge in combination with other information sources [ 15 , 17 , 41 ]. It can be easy to include expert knowledge because it may only be a question of asking an expert of their opinion.…”

“…The majority of articles found in this systematic literature review use previous research to find the different possible vulnerabilities or attacks on the systems that they model [ 4 , 13 , 16 , 19 , 23 , 26 , 28 – 30 , 34 , 46 , 52 , 53 ]. Previous research is also used in combination with other information sources [ 9 – 11 , 20 , 31 , 41 ]. This previous research can consist of research articles or published reports.…”

“…There are multiple different vulnerabilities databases that aim to categorize and explain vulnerabilities for different systems and these can be used as information sources when modeling. The ones found in this review are the U.S. National Vulnerability Database (NVD) 3 [ 2 , 12 , 17 , 41 , 49 ], MITRE 4 [ 31 , 44 ], several CERTs databases 5 , 6 , 7 [ 1 , 12 , 44 ] as well as the Chinese databases Chinese National Vulnerability Database (CNNVD) 8 [ 41 ].…”

Energy Informatics

“…The analysis is based on an innovative load balancing centered smart grid reference architecture model that allows cyber-attacks and countermeasures to be introduced and analyzed. Based on their findings the authors raise concerns whether the architecture of the smart grid is satisfactory to meet the present and future cyber threats (Vernotte et al 2018).…”