Strategic PMU placement to alleviate power system vulnerability against cyber attacks

Abstract

A strategic phasor measurement unit (PMU) placement scheme is proposed in this work to reduce the cyber vulnerability of the power system against cyber attacks. A multi-stage PMU placement strategy is developed to alleviate the power system vulnerability against the possible false data injection attacks using the forward dynamic programming to distribute the capital cost of PMUs over a time horizon. An index is also proposed to quantify the vulnerability of the nodes of a grid against false data injection attacks. This index is useful in selecting the optimal set of candidate buses for PMUs placement and prioritising the candidate buses for PMUs placement in a specific deployment stage. The proposed scheme will also ensure the critical observability of the grid in its first stage and increment in observability levels in subsequent stages. Simulation results are provided for IEEE 14-bus, IEEE 39-bus, and IEEE 118-bus test systems, considering the impact of zero injection buses (ZIBs) on optimisation process, to justify the effectiveness of the proposed index and PMUs placement approach.