Design for Secure and Resilient Data Exchange Across DistributedCyber-Physical Sensors and Analytics in Decentralized Energy Systems

Abstract

Resilience of power systems requires mutualistically supported survivability characteristics of their cyber, physical, and cyber-physical networks. These networks of electrical and communication exchange, and their successful and reliable available interconnections and interactions underpin core energy delivery functions. Providing comprehensive system resilience across a wide range of time and geographic scales requires actionable intelligence. The challenge lies in deriving this intelligence using data extracted from power systems with heterogeneous sensors, networks and network types. Providing this cyber-physical situational awareness (CPSA) at scale calls for advancements in scientific techniques, system designs, and their implementations. The goal is to provide CPSA data fusion through a secure data exchange implementation designed to be extended and generalized for application across the full range of large-scale grid architectures. Addressing this need requires work to expose and address the challenges of sensor design and implementation architecture for fusing and delivering cyber-physical data from heterogeneous locations throughout these networks. This paper proposes and presents a sensor design and implementation architecture for such a secure data exchange, with the aim of achieving CPSA on the interconnected electric grid at multiple levels with multiple owners involving integration of security technologies. The authors also address the many individual resource and interface requirements posed by the variety of devices involved, offering specific security measures to address them.