Resilient Distributed DC Optimal Power Flow Against Data Integrity Attack

This paper investigates and addresses the vulnerability of the distributed DC optimal power flow (DC-OPF) algorithm to data integrity attacks. In particular, we first show that a compromised distributed controller on a single bus could manipulate the power dispatch result by sharing false information to neighboring buses. Two malicious scenarios of launching the data integrity attack are considered, namely economic-driven and infeasibility-driven attacks, respectively. These vulnerabilities demonstrate a growing need for anomaly detection and mitigation mechanisms that fit into the distributed power system framework to counteract highly skilled malicious cyber attackers. We then introduce a resilient distributed DC-OPF algorithm with an embedded attack-resilient control mechanism. It performs two major functions in a fully distributed way: 1) verifying the correctness of the shared information from neighboring buses while protecting each other's privacy and 2) identifying the compromised distributed controllers and recovering the optimal power dispatch result from the impact of data integrity attacks. The effectiveness of the proposed attack-resilient mechanism is illustrated through case studies in the IEEE 14-bus system.