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Understanding the Impacts of Data Integrity Attacks in the Context of Transactive Control Systems

The rapid growth of internet-connected smart devices capable of exchanging energy price information and adaptively controlling the consumption of connected loads, has paved the way for transactive control to make inroads in the modern grid. Transactive control frameworks integrate the wholesale and retail energy markets, and enable active participation of end users, thereby playing a key role in managing the rising number of distributed assets.However, the use of internet for the communication of data among the building, distribution,and transmission levels makes the system susceptible to external intrusions. A skilled adversary can potentially manipulate the exchanged data with the intention to inflict damage to the system or increase financial gains. In this thesis, the effect of such data integrity attacks on information exchanged between the distribution systems operator and end-users is investigated. Impact on grid operations is evaluated using different categories like operational, financial, user comfort and reliability parameters. It is shown that attack impact depends on a number of factors like attack duration, time of attack, penetration rate etc besides the attack magnitude. The effect of an attack continues to persist for some time after its removal and hence effective detection and mitigation strategies will be required to ensure system resilience and robustness. / Master of Science / Transactive energy is a framework where price-responsive loads adjust their energy consumption at a certain time according to the real-time energy price sent by the utility. Field demonstrations in recent years have shown that transactive control can effectively manage grid objectives and also monetarily benefit both the electric utility and end-users. Therefore, transactive energy is expected to make inroads into conventional grid operations in the next few years. As successful operation of such a market depends on the information exchanged among different stakeholders, a malicious adversary may try to inject false data and affect system operations. This thesis investigates how manipulating data in the transactive energy platform affects system operations and financial gains of different stakeholders. Understanding system behavior under attack conditions will help in formulating effective detection and mitigation strategies and enhancing system resilience.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/86851
Date January 2018
CreatorsBiswas, Shuchismita
ContributorsElectrical and Computer Engineering, Centeno, Virgilio A., De La Ree, Jaime, Kekatos, Vasileios, Pal, Seemita
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
FormatETD, application/pdf
RightsCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

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