Authenticating source information of distribution synchrophasors at intra-state locations for cyber-physical resilient power networks

As power systems are gradually evolving into more efficient and intelligent cyber-physical energy systems with the large-scale penetration of renewable energies and information and communication technologies, they become increasingly reliant upon more accurate monitoring and fast control. Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) collect high-precision Distribution Synchrophasors (DS) data regarding the system dynamics and provide real-time situational awareness for better monitoring and control of large-scale power grids. The accuracy and generalizability of the PMUs heavily rely upon the data quality of DS measurements, which is very susceptible to newly emerging “Source ID Mix” data spoofing attacks. Such attacks could maliciously alter a large portion of supposedly protected data, which may not be easily detected by existing operational practices, thereby jeopardizing most DS-based applications and even causing catastrophic power interruptions. This paper proposes a novel data-driven source authentication method to automatically identify the source information of DS collected from multiple intra-state locations and thus enhance the reliability and cybersecurity of power systems. The proposed method integrates Mathematical Morphological Decomposition (MMD) and Multi-Weighted Deep Stacking Forest (MLW-DSF) for providing accurate source authentication with a low computational cost which requires neither system's models nor parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed method is corroborated through seven “state-of-the-art” data-driven models by using real-life DS measurements of power networks in Queensland state