Cyber-physical Anomaly Management in Massively Digitized Power Systems

The past century has witnessed a digitization trend of electric power grid where increasing digital solutions are being integrated into electric power grids. The digital solutions include advanced sensors (e.g., synchrophasors, and smart meters), inverter-based resources (e.g., renewables, energy storage, and electric vehicles), and grid edge intelligence (e.g., smart thermostats). These digital solutions in the grid not only provide opportunities for enhancing monitoring, control and protection of the power grid, but also pose challenges of ensuring both cyber and physical security of the grid. How to leverage the emerging opportunities and how to address the pressing challenges define a key research question as we move towards a low-carbon future. This talk will provide two concrete examples that directly answer this question. Specifically, to show how to leverage rich streaming synchrophasor data in bulk power transmission systems, the first example of this talk will present a purely data-driven yet physically interpretable algorithm that can pinpoint the sources of a type of anomalies that may cause large-scale blackouts, i.e., forced oscillations. The localization algorithm leverages the low-rank and sparse properties of streaming data of power grids. The second example will introduce a co-design of the secondary frequency regulation in systems of AC microgrids and its cyber security solutions. The new microgrid frequency regulator can address physical anomalies due to fast renewable fluctuations, and it can reduce cyber risks facing microgrids/future power distribution systems, by exploiting structures of microgrid dynamics. This talk will be concluded with an interdisciplinary research agenda that aims to overcome bottlenecks of decarbonizing the electricity sector.