Cyber Restoration of Power Systems: Concept and Methodology for Resilient Observability

In order to have a properly functioning cyber–physical power system, the operational data need to be properly measured, transmitted, and processed. In case of a malicious event on the cyber layer of the power system, such as the wide-area monitoring system, cyber components, such as phasor measurement units (PMUs), communication routers, and phasor data concentrators (PDCs) may be compromised, leading to an unobservable power system. This article proposes the concept of cyber restoration of power systems, and an optimal restoration scheme to recover the system observability swiftly after massive interruptions. The cyber restoration problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem considering PMU measurability, communication network connectivity, and PDC processability conditions, as well as cyber restoration resources as constraints. Results in the IEEE 57-bus system validate that the proposed optimization method can provide solutions that recover system observability much faster than heuristic methods, demonstrating the need for systematic cyber restoration planning research and implementation.