Cyber-Physical Security in Smart Power Systems from a Resilience Perspective: Concepts and Possible Solutions

Vital energy infrastructures in today's evolving society are becoming more complex by distributed networks of cyber-physical systems (CPS). Although CPS provides a great deal of flexibility in the exploitation of critical infrastructure, they can also create other security-based threats which should be suitably addressed in the design and development stage. Considering this issue, power systems should be properly resistant against adverse events so that their operation is not easily impacted by severe conditions. At the same time, energy systems should be flexible enough to adapt to severe disruptions without losing or breaking down completely, and they should be able to recover in the least time after solving the problem. This critical feature of power systems is generally called resilience. This chapter provides an overview of various resilience methods from the perspective of CPS in smart power systems and microgrids. In order to provide a detailed study, in this chapter, cyber-physical structures, threats and security issues in smart power systems are introduced. Vulnerabilities of control systems and important methods for detecting and countering cyber-attacks with defenses mechanism in smart power systems are presented. Possible solutions to improve cyber-physical resilience of smart power systems and some important optimization techniques used in smart power systems and microgrids are provided, which can be utilized and developed by researchers in this field.