Cyber-Physical Real-Time Digital Simulation for Cybersecurity Analysis in Microgrids

The rapid power grid digitalisation is increasingly addressing the importance of a real-time and high-fidelity cyber-physical co-simulation platform, which enables risk-free validation before the real-world implementation, especially for the cybersecurity research. Existing related works mainly focus on the impact analysis of attacks in massive power grid scenarios, while a thorough investigation regarding the implementation framework, cybersecurity analysis, and suitability assessment is lacking. Towards this end, we first propose a general implementation framework for real-time leader-follower and time-stepped co-simulation schemes, which are used to establish two cyber-physical co-simulation platforms based on off-the-shelf power and communication simulators. Then, thorough cybersecurity studies are conducted to showcase the relations between co-simulation configurations such as the communication network topology and attack compatibility. Finally, a set of metrics derived from synchronization computational overhead, latency, simulation scalability, and attack compatibility is presented to assess the suitability of a co-simulation platform for cybersecurity research. Recommendations are given to provide guidelines for industry practitioners and academia researchers in the establishment of cyber-physical co-simulation platforms that drive cybersecurity advancements.