Modeling Load Redistribution Attacks in Integrated Electricity-Gas Systems

As the share of gas-fired power generation continues to increase, it is essential to consider integrated electricity-gas systems (IEGSs). However, the development of IEGSs has led to an increased reliance on cyber infrastructures, such as communication systems, which in turn makes IEGSs more susceptible to cyberattacks. This paper investigates the paradigm and stealthy conditions of load redistribution (LR) attacks on IEGSs and proposes a bilevel mixed-integer model to identify the most severe LR attack from an economic perspective. Under a mild assumption, we prove that the proposed model does not exclude any possible upper-level attack, which differs from existing models that may yield suboptimal solutions. A modified reformulation and decomposition (R&D) algorithm is developed to solve this model in a master-subproblem framework. Particularly, we design a new subproblem to address potential infeasibility issues in the master problem. Accordingly, two types of cuts are added to the master problem for ensuring algorithm feasibility and solution optimality. Testing results validate the effectiveness of the proposed model and solution method.