Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities of Smart Inverters and Their Impacts on Power System Operation

Smart Inverters (SIs) are becoming more popular with their ability to support voltage and frequency in a grid. This helps overcome the natural limitation of renewable energy deployments. More companies are looking at using SIs in their networks and closely study their impacts of these devices on the power system operation. Carefully controlled test environments show that necessary auxiliary support can be received from SIs. However, these modes actively inject power into the grid and may cause unknown problems. Especially if the SI control block is compromised by a hacker, these problems may have disastrous consequences. In order to fill this gap and investigate these points, a newly developed simulation platform called Sora-Grid is utilized to investigate impacts of cyberattacks on SI operation as well as power system operation at large. With the integration of Information Technologies (IT) and automation in power systems, cybersecurity has become a real threat and a concern. Most of the cybersecurity research focuses on large scale power plants that are connected at transmission level. This work analyzes the impact of such attacks on small-scale inverters that are connected to distribution networks. Based on these findings, cybersecurity measures can be developed to secure SI operation.