Electric Vehicle Switching Attacks Against Subsynchronous Stability of Power Systems

The deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) requires the integration of information and communication technologies, making power grids prone to cyber threats from EV cyber-infrastructure. On this basis, this paper studies the impact of a new family of EV-based load-altering attacks (EV-LAA) against the subsynchronous stability of the power grid. First, the cyber-physical connections between the EV ecosystem and the power grid are discussed to represent a threat model for coordinated electric vehicle switching attacks (EVSAs) that can excite torsional modes of the system. Then, it will be demonstrated that a traditional proportional-integral (PI)-based subsynchronous resonance damping controller (SSRDC) cannot stabilize the power grid. With the help of a customized unknown input observer (UIO), an adaptive control framework is developed based on a model predictive control (MPC). This framework can generate online control signals and add them to the internal control framework of the synchronous generators (SGs). A modified IEEE Second Benchmark (M-IEEE-SBM) is used to demonstrate the EV-LAAs' consequences and evaluate the effectiveness of the developed adaptive technique. The proposed strategy is also studied through real-time simulations under a testbed that integrates a virtual sphere (vSphere) for an EV ecosystem with power grids simulated in a real-time simulator (i.e., OPAL-RT 5650). To demonstrate the feasibility of this switching attack vector in an actual power system and its impact on SSR stability, the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station (PVNGS) is also simulated in this real-time simulator, and the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive control framework is validated under the EV-LAAs.