Evaluating Backup Control Center Architecture for Power Grid: Path Forward and Cloud Solutions

With increasing operational disruptions caused by climate change-driven natural disasters, large-scale sophisticated cyber attacks, and human errors, the need for robust backup control center (BCC) solutions has become critical. This work presents a comprehensive evaluation of existing backup control center architectures with their limitation - specifically, we in-troduce three types of BCC architectures, three historian data flow architectures, and fail-over testing procedures. We provide an overview of the existing backup control center architectures, highlighting the challenges faced by existing BCC setups in terms of scalability, redundancy, and response time. We propose a cloud-based disaster recovery solution and outline the imple-mentation architectures at BCC to ensure minimum downtime and quick recovery. This is followed by a discussion of the advantages associated with the integration of cloud-based disaster recovery centers to enhance their reliability and efficiency. The paper then discusses the economic implications and scalability of adopting cloud-based backup solution, considering factors such as infrastructure costs, maintenance, and adaptability to evolving power system operational requirements.