Real-Time Simulation of a Resilient Control Center for Inverter-Based Microgrids

The number of installed remote terminal units (RTU) is on the rise, increasing the observability and control of the power system. RTUs enable sending data to and receiving data from a control center in the power system. A distribution grid control center runs distribution management system (DMS) algorithms, where the DMS takes control actions during transients and outages, such as tripping a circuit breaker and disconnecting a controllable load to increase the resiliency of the grid. Relying on communication-based devices makes the control center vulnerable to cyberattacks, and attackers can send falsified data to the control center to cause disturbances or power outages. Previous work has conducted research on developing ways to detect a cyberattack and ways to mitigate the adverse effects of the attack. This work studies false data injection (FDI) attacks on the DMS algorithm of a fully inverter-based microgrid in real time. The fully inverter-based microgrid is simulated using an RTDS, an amplifier, an electronic load, a server, a network switch, and a router. The DMS is integrated into the server codes and exchanges data with RTDS through TCP/IP protocols. Moreover, a recurrent neural network (RNN) algorithm is used to detect and mitigate the cyberattack. The effectiveness of the detection and mitigation algorithm is tested under various scenarios using the real-time testbed.