Towards an Unified Dependency Analysis Methodology for Wide Area Measurement Systems in Smart Grids

Abstract

Wide Area Measurement Systems (WAMS) enable the real time monitoring and control of smart grids by combining digital measurement devices, communication and control systems. As WAMS consist of various interdependent infrastructures, they imply complex cyber, physical and geographical dependencies among their underlying components. Although several existing works have studied these types of dependencies independently, there is a lack of a holistic approach that can simultaneously capture all different dependency types. The main goal of this paper is to examine the overall dependencies of WAMS infrastructures. We present preliminary results based on simple and well defined set of rules, that unifies cyber, physical and geographical dependencies of WAMS. Such a unified approach may support the design of WAMS infrastructures that are inherently more resilient to disruptions caused by different kinds of unwanted events such as cyber attacks (affecting cyber dependencies), faults (affecting physical dependencies) or natural disasters that may affect geographically dependent WAMS components.