Panel Session: Leveraging High-fidelity Cyber Physical Testbeds & Datasets for Prototyping and Validating Resilient Controls for Future Grids (slides)
Creators: T. Edgar
M. Govindarasu
R. Cox
Publisher: name: IEEE
Year: 2022

As the penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) continues to increase across the entire transmission and distribution grid, it is extremely important to ensure that their associated hierarchical controls at different levels (device, sub-system, system level) work together to enhance the overall stability, reliability, and resiliency of the system. Under this context, it is essential to ensure that existing simulation models accurately capture the behavior of futuristic smart grids under a range of normal and off-normal conditions including natural faults and cyber attacks. Cyber Physical Testbeds serve as an ideal platform to ensure that high-fidelity, real-time models can be interfaced with real/emulated controllers and actual hardware subsystems to perform controller/power hardware in the loop experimentation across a range of conditions. This would enable the validation of these component and system models across a range of conditions and allows the impact assessment of various types of hazards on the controls and the evaluate the overall resilience of the system. Further, these testbeds allow the generation of much needed datasets, which can drive the development and testing of new data-driven, resilient controls for DERs.
In this panel, we intend to bring together a panel of subject matter experts across the national labs and universities with well-known cyber physical system testbeds. Each of the panelists will talk about their unique perspectives on leveraging such testbeds to perform relevant research to implement, prototype, and validate resilient controls, as well as on available resources such as models and datasets for the research community. Overall, we anticipate our panel to provide a synthesis of valuable technical information on how cyber physical testbeds provide value to prototype and validate resilient controls for futuristic grids with a lot of DERs.
As the penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) continues to increase across the entire transmission and distribution grid, it is extremely important to ensure that their associated hierarchical controls at different levels (device, sub-system, system level) work together to enhance the overall stability, reliability, and resiliency of the system. Under this context, it is essential to ensure that existing simulation models accurately capture the behavior of futuristic smart grids under a range of normal and off-normal conditions including natural faults and cyber attacks. Cyber Physical Testbeds serve as an ideal platform to ensure that high-fidelity, real-time models can be interfaced with real/emulated controllers and actual hardware subsystems to perform controller/power hardware in the loop experimentation across a range of conditions. This would enable the validation of these component and system models across a range of conditions and allows the impact assessment of various types of hazards on the controls and the evaluate the overall resilience of the system. Further, these testbeds allow the generation of much needed datasets, which can drive the development and testing of new data-driven, resilient controls for DERs.<br />In this panel, we intend to bring together a panel of subject matter experts across the national labs and universities with well-known cyber physical system testbeds. Each of the panelists will talk about their unique perspectives on leveraging such testbeds to perform relevant research to implement, prototype, and validate resilient controls, as well as on available resources such as models and datasets for the research community. Overall, we anticipate our panel to provide a synthesis of valuable technical information on how cyber physical testbeds provide value to prototype and validate resilient controls for futuristic grids with a lot of DERs.<br />Presentations and Panelists:<br />• “Combining multiple levels of fidelity for experimentally investigating proof of concept controls and quantifying resilience” by T. Edgar, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory<br />• “High-Fidelity, Scalable CPS Security Testbeds for Smart Grid and Its R&D use-cases” by M. Govindarasu, Iowa State University<br />• “Experiences of configuring Duke Energy Smart Grid Laboratory testbed and using it on research projects” by R. Cox, University of North Carolina, Charlotte