Summary
Acronym : CYPRESS – resilience of smart grid systems
Funder : Federal government
Start : Sept 2021
End : Sept 2025
Academic coordinators : Pierre Henneaux, Pierre-Etienne Labeau, and Jean-Michel Dricot
Abstract
The energy transition leads towards smarter electric power systems taking the form of cyber-physical sys- tems in which the electrical power grids are strongly interlinked with a growing number of information and communicationsystems. Theprojectaimsatdevelopingnovelknowledge,methodsandtoolsneededto help ensuring the security of supply through the transmission grid, while accounting for the specific nature of cyber-threats and integrating them into a coherent probabilistic risk management approach.
Reliability management of electric power transmission grids is in practice carried out via the so-called N-1 security principle, prescribing to ensure continuity of supply subsequently to the loss of any single transmis- sion system element (lines, transformers, cables). However, it is well recognized:
- i) that the N-1 principle is not optimal from a socio-economic point of view, and that a probabilistic risk- management approach would yield a better tradeoff between the cost of energy supply and the benefits of continuity of supply (see the GARPUR FP7 project at https://www.sintef.no/projectweb/garpur/),
- ii) that in addition to grid-component failures, the system should also be able to resist to malfunctioning of its information and communication subsystems and to cyber-attacks (see the GAO-19-332 report to the US Congress, at https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-332). This malfunctioning can occur due to in- duced failures or due to misinformation.
The physical threats covered by the N-1 principle are mostly due to weather and component ageing related failures of lines, transformers, and substation equipment. These threats are increasing and more and more complicated to manage, because of climate change and because of the increasing age of the infrastructure, and in particular of the transmission and distribution grids. On the other hand, the cyber-threats acting on the power system are even more rapidly increasing, because of the quickly growing foot-print and complex- ity of its information and communication subsystems and because of their permanent functional evolution. At the same time, adverse entities, like criminal organizations, terrorist groups, or foreign nations, become increasingly capable of attacking the power system by intruding into its cyber-layers and intentionally cre- ating malfunctions of these layers (see e.g. https://www.us-cert.gov/ics/alerts/IR-ALERT-H-16-056-01) .