Coherency-Based Detection Algorithm for Synchrophasor Cyberattacks

Abstract

The wide area monitoring system (WAMS) is critical for power system situational awareness, but represents a growing cybersecurity vulnerability. Malicious adversaries may seek to compromise one or more PMUs in order to effect control decisions that unnecessarily disrupt typical grid operations. One example of a particularly pernicious attack vector is the spoofing or replaying of a fault event using one or more compromised PMUs. This work documents the development and validation of a coherency-based cyberattack detection algorithm that integrates a sliding-window singular value decomposition (SVD) with physics-based partitioning analysis to achieve accurate classification of events. Special consideration is given to discerning a sophisticated fault-replay or fault spoofing attack from actual faults. A software-based cybersecurity testbed has been developed for rigorous testing of the algorithm. The algorithm is further validated using simulated synchrophasor datasets obtained from a MinniWECC 63-bus test system. Results show that the algorithm can successfully detect fault-replay attacks even when over half of the PMUs are compromised.