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Article
Cybersecurity Analysis of Load Frequency Control in Power Systems: A Survey
School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications
  • Sahaj Saxena, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Punjab
  • Sajal Bhatia, Sacred Heart University
  • Rahul Gupta, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Punjab
Document Type
Peer-Reviewed Article
Publication Date
1-1-2021
Abstract

Today, power systems have transformed considerably and taken a new shape of geographically distributed systems from the locally centralized systems thereby leading to a new infrastructure in the framework of networked control cyber-physical system (CPS). Among the different important operations to be performed for smooth generation, transmission, and distribution of power, maintaining the scheduled frequency, against any perturbations, is an important one. The load frequency control (LFC) operation actually governs this frequency regulation activity after the primary control. Due to CPS nature, the LFC operation is vulnerable to attacks, both from physical and cyber standpoints. The cyber-attack strategies ranges from a variety of attacks such as jamming the network communication, time-delay attack, and false data injection. Motivated by these perspectives, this paper studies the cybersecurity issues of the power systems during the LFC operation, and a survey is conducted on the security analysis of LFC. Various cyber-attack strategies, their mathematical models, and vulnerability assessments are performed to understand the possible threats and sources causing failure of frequency regulation. The LFC operation of two-area power systems is considered as a tutorial example to quantify the vulnerabilities. Mitigation strategies through control theoretic approaches are then reviewed and highlighted for LFC operation under cyber-attack.

Comments

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

DOI
10.3390/designs5030052
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Citation Information

Saxena, S., Bhatia, S., & Gupta, R. (2021). Cybersecurity analysis of load frequency control in power systems: A survey. Designs, 5(3), 52. Doi: 10.3390/designs5030052