FPGA-based Real-Time Fault Suppression and Secure Smart Grid for Smart City Emulation

As the world progresses towards cleaner and more intelligent energy systems, developing a secure and dependable smart grid becomes essential. A smart grid merges with advanced communication, control, and automation technologies to manage the generation, distribution, and consumption of electricity in an effective way. However, the speed of integration speeds up by making the systems face a high risk of faults, cyber threats, and scalability challenges. This study mainly introduces a fault current suppression method that uses a city-wide emulation platform designed to improve the security and reliability of the smart grid. In case it is not managed properly, the fault current can cause damage to electrical components and threaten human safety. Moreover, this project focuses on a smart city simulation platform that models, such as residential loads, electric vehicles, distributed energy resources, and smart meters within a secure and scalable framework. This feature allows for emulation and assessment of grid performance under realistic scenarios, by promoting the development of more resilient urban energy management approaches. To safeguard grid communications, the system integrates embedded cryptographic algorithms, namely AES, ChaCha20, and Blowfish, that provide secure and efficient data encryption and decryption. All these implementations enable robust cybersecurity across communication channels. By combining the simulation-based systems with intelligent, scalable smart grid modeling, this project mainly addresses key challenges in fault tolerance, cyber-physical security, and energy efficiency at a city scale, paving the way for future resilient smart cities by providing a novel holistic framework that can be uniquely integrated with a real-time encryption and scalable urban testbed simulation.