Experimental Validation of a Cyber-Resilient Frequency Control for Islanded Microgrids

This paper proposes an innovative nonlinear PID-based virtual inertia (NPID-VI) control scheme to enhance frequency performance in cyber-physical islanded microgrids. A cyber-hardware-in-the-loop (Cyber-HIL) microgrid testbed is developed for real-time experimental validation, enabling cyber-physical interdependence analysis. It integrates the physical and cyber layers within the microgrid, utilizing OPAL-RT and Network Simulator-3. Docker containers have also been deployed to represent the control agents and interface between the cyber and physical layers. The developed control scheme’s reliability, applicability, and cyber resiliency have been rigorously validated across practical challenges, including high penetration of renewable energy sources, communication delays, and distributed denial of service attacks. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in improving the frequency response and resilience, outperforming other control approaches in diverse practical challenges.