A Resilient Tri-Parametric Fractional Frequency Control for Cybersecurity Threats Amid Latency

A stealthy cyberattack (SCA) aims to gradually drive the system toward instability. Although research is continuing in attack detection algorithms, a resilient control strategy is vital if SCAs go undetected for a considerable time. Especially for a controller involved in automatic generation control (AGC), resiliency becomes more crucial as the controller has to sometimes work under abnormal conditions considering that shutdown of operation is not an option. This paper introduces an innovative approach to support dual-area thermal power systems in the face of network-related challenges such as transference latency (TL) and SCAs. We propose a new tri-parametric fractional controller (TFC) that merges the advantages of proportional-integral and proportional-derivative operations, eliminating the need for additional control loops and enhancing system efficiency. The TFC's efficacy in mitigating random and step load disturbances is established, outperforming existing controllers. We employ the complex root boundary method to define the optimal parameter search space, with an improved equilibrium optimizer algorithm determining the best controller settings. The inclusion of renewable energy sources, including solar and wind, is considered, and the robustness of the system is evaluated using uncertainty norms and complementary sensitivity functions. Our approach is validated through hardware-in-loop real-time verification on the OPAL-RT platform, demonstrating superior performance in maintaining frequency stability under SCAs and TL challenges.