Towards Secured Smart Grid 2.0: Exploring Security Threats, Protection Models, and Challenges

TL;DR

This paper reviews security threats and defense tactics for three stakeholders: power grid operators, communication network providers, and consumers and found that SG2’s stakeholders are particularly vulnerable to substation attacks/vandalism, malware/ransomware threats, blockchain vulnerabilities and supply chain breakdowns.

Abstract

Many nations are promoting the green transition in the energy sector to attain neutral carbon emissions by 2050. Smart Grid 2.0 (SG2) is expected to explore data-driven analytics and enhance communication technologies to improve the efficiency and sustainability of distributed renewable energy systems. These features are beyond smart metering and electric surplus distribution in conventional smart grids. Given the high dependence on communication networks to connect distributed microgrids in SG2, potential cascading failures of connectivity can cause disruption to data synchronization to the remote control systems. This paper reviews security threats and defense tactics for three stakeholders: power grid operators, communication network providers, and consumers. Through the survey, we found that SG2's stakeholders are particularly vulnerable to substation attacks/vandalism, malware/ransomware threats, blockchain vulnerabilities and supply chain breakdowns. Furthermore, incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into autonomous energy management in distributed energy resources of SG2 creates new challenges. Accordingly, adversarial samples and false data injection on electricity reading and measurement sensors at power plants can fool AI-powered control functions and cause messy error-checking operations in energy storage, wrong energy estimation in electric vehicle charging, and even fraudulent transactions in peer-to-peer energy trading models. Scalable blockchain-based models, physical unclonable function, interoperable security protocols, and trustworthy AI models designed for managing distributed microgrids in SG2 are typical promising protection models for future research.

Figures (21)

• Figure 1: The illustration shows the crucial role of communication technologies in synchronizing measurement data from substations, enabling remote control capabilities for efficient power distribution. However, the dependency of power grids on communication technology creates fresh threats of security attacks to energy security, e.g., ransomware to disable control systems and denial of services against transmission lines to stop data exchange.
• Figure 2: This work addresses energy security principles for SG2 from a view of interdependent power grid communication networks, notably with the introduction of new technologies for three entities (power provider, communication network provider, consumer), such as energy storage, 5G/6G, AI-powered functions, and peer-to-peer energy trading models.
• Figure 3: The following is a summary of the major findings from our survey on security and protection strategies for Smart Grid 2.0. The decorative colors for technologies match those for the three entities (power provider, communication network provider, and customer) illustrated in the previous figures.
• Figure 4: The illustration of comparison between smart grid 1.0 and smart grid 2.0 along with key features, architecture and main requirement differences.
• Figure 5: The illustration of three stakeholders in SG2: power grid providers, communication network providers, and consumers. Power providers have a complicated infrastructure of power plants, transformers, and substations. Communication network providers include several networking technologies (e.g., Zigbee, LoRa), which provide connectivity to connect sensors from energy generation, transmission, and distribution, to consumers and remote centers.