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A FUNCTION-BASED METHODOLOGY FOR EVALUATING RESILIENCE IN SMART GRIDS
By
Anas Al Majali
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMPUTER ENGINEERING)
December 2014
Copyright 2014 Anas Al Majali
Object Description
| Title | A function-based methodology for evaluating resilience in smart grids |
| Author | Al Majali, Anas |
| Author email | almajali@usc.edu;anasmajali@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Computer Engineering |
| School | Viterbi School of Engineering |
| Date defended/completed | 2014-08-28 |
| Date submitted | 2014-09-19 |
| Date approved | 2014-09-22 |
| Restricted until | 2014-09-22 |
| Date published | 2014-09-22 |
| Advisor (committee chair) |
Neuman, Clifford B. Prasanna, Viktor |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Beshir, Mohammed J. Halfond, William G. J. |
| Abstract | Utilizing communication, control and computation technologies in the modern smart grid can enhance the reliability of the smart grid, reduce electricity costs and provide new real-time customer services. While utilizing those technologies can be beneficial to customers and utilities, they also make the smart grid susceptible to new types of attacks and failures. One of the main characteristics that are required in modern smart grids is to operate resiliently in the presence of attacks and other disturbances. Evaluating the resilience of the smart grid has been a topic of interest in recent years. Researchers in the environmental hazards domain use stochastic and statistical methods to evaluate smart grid resilience. However, those techniques do not always apply when evaluating resilience in the presence of malicious sources. On the other hand, researchers in the cyber-security domain evaluate resilience of smart grids in an ad hoc fashion or rely on risk assessment methodologies to do the evaluation. ❧ In this work, we introduce a systematic and comprehensive function-based methodology that can be used to evaluate the resilience of the smart grid to failures that are caused by malicious sources. This methodology consists of four main steps. The first two steps represent the modeling part of the methodology whereas the second two steps represent the experimental evaluation of those models. First, we start by identifying the function under study and the functions and components on which it depends. By doing this, we scope the evaluation process to a single function at a time. By exploiting those dependencies, an attack tree is created to abstract the consequences of multiple attacks and demonstrate how attacks propagate between different domains. In the experimental part of the methodology, we use simulation tools to evaluate the resilience of the function under study in the presence of cyber-physical attacks. Based on the evaluation process, the main factors that affect resilience of a certain functionality can be determined. The resilience of the system is quantified by identifying the dependability limits to which the system can withstand variations caused by attacks. Knowing this type of information helps in deriving security policies and designing security components that govern the behavior of the system and keep it resilient. ❧ The usefulness of the function-based methodology is demonstrated by three novel use cases: 1) cyber-physical threat of a load drop attack 2) cyber threat of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack on the communication architecture of the smart grid and 3) cyber-physical threats on demand response when used as spinning reserve in the smart grid. The resilience of the smart grid in the presence of these three threats was evaluated. ❧ In the load drop attack use case, we evaluated the impact of a sudden load drop on the power delivery functionality and frequency of the system. The results identify the maximum load that the system can withstand if dropped within a certain time. In the second use case, we evaluated the impact of a DoS attack on the remote metering and demand response functionalities. The DoS attack is performed in the customers’ neighborhood area where smart meters communicate with the utility through an RF mesh network. The results showed that it requires an attacker to compromise only a small fraction of the meters in a typical RF mesh region to disrupt the communication resilience within the region. The results demonstrate that disrupting the communication resilience caused remote metering and demand response failures. Finally, we evaluated the resilience of the system when demand response is used as spinning reserve. When there is a power contingency, demand response curtails certain amount of load to stabilize the system to 60Hz. In this use case, we analyze the stability of the system when demand response is under attack. The results identify the minimum amount of load that should respond to a power contingency to stabilize the frequency of the system. ❧ Resilience evaluation is done by creating a boundary of acceptable system dependability in the presence of the malicious attacks. System dependability is measured based on the function specific metrics used in each use case. Our results can be used to derive security policies and our function-based methodology will be useful for the evaluation of additional use cases in the smart grid and other cyber-physical systems. |
| Keyword | resilience; smart grids; cyber-physical security |
| Language | English |
| Format (imt) | application/pdf |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Al Majali, Anas |
| Physical access | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-AlMajaliAn-2967.pdf |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume14/etd-AlMajaliAn-2967.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | A FUNCTION-BASED METHODOLOGY FOR EVALUATING RESILIENCE IN SMART GRIDS By Anas Al Majali A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (COMPUTER ENGINEERING) December 2014 Copyright 2014 Anas Al Majali |
