Remotely Accessible Cyber-Physical System Testbed for Power Grid's Security and Reliability

With the increasing complexity and integration of digital technologies in power grids, ensuring their security and reliability has become a critical challenge. Cyber-physical threats pose significant risks to the stability and functionality of these systems. To address these challenges, there is a need for comprehensive testbeds that can simulate real-world scenarios and assess the resilience of power grid operations under various cyber-physical attack vectors. This paper presents a remotely accessible cyber-physical system (CPS) testbed that we designed and built to study the security and reliability issues of power grids. Utilizing Node-RED in the front-end and integrating GridPACK, HELICS, and NS3 in the back-end, the testbed provides comprehensive capabilities for simulating, monitoring, and analyzing power grid performance under various scenarios, including various kinds of cyber-attack. The CPS testbed enables us to measure performance metrics such as network latency, packet loss, voltage stability, and system response time are monitored under normal and attack conditions through various simulations and real-time data analysis. This testbed provides a valuable tool for researchers and engineers to study and improve power grid security and resilience.