Voltage control for interconnected microgrids under adversarial actions

Abstract

In this paper, we study the impact of adversarial actions on voltage control schemes in interconnected microgrids. Each microgrid is abstracted as a power inverter that can be controlled to regulate its voltage magnitude and phase-angle independently. Moreover, each power inverter is modeled as a single integrator, whose input is given by a voltage droop-control policy that is computed based on voltage magnitude and reactive power injection measurements. Under mild assumptions, we then establish important properties of the nominal linearized closed-loop system, such as stability, positivity, and diagonal dominance. These properties play an important role when characterizing the potential impact of different attack scenarios. In particular, we discuss two attack scenarios where the adversary corrupts measurement data and reference signals received by the voltage droop controllers. The potential impact of instances of each scenario is analyzed using control-theoretic tools, which may be used to develop methodologies for identifying high-risk attack scenarios, as is illustrated by numerical examples.