Protection and Communication Model of Intelligent Electronic Devices to Investigate Security Threats

Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs), e.g., protective relays, have a vital role for protecting power systems and substations. In modern power systems, the performance of protection schemes by IEDs can be affected by cyber-physical, communication and cybersecurity operations and thus, a holistic modeling approach is required where all the domains are properly considered. However, commercial protective relays used in the field are mainly modeled using closed-source software. Therefore, this work proposes an integrated, realistic, and flexible model of an overcurrent protective relay compatible with IEC 61850 communication standard. This open-source model integrates the behavioural interactions between the protective relays and their physical, communication and cybersecurity operations in a digital substation. A model of transmission substation is developed in MATLAB/Simulink® for validation purposes and the effect of communication operations and cybersecurity threats on the relay's physical operations is investigated according to different case studies and attack scenarios.1- This work was partially supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101016936 (ELECTRON), and by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N0 739551 (KIOS CoE –TEAMING) and from the Republic of Cyprus through the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy. 2- Copyright note:© 2023 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. 3- Citation: M. F. Elrawy, E. Tekki, L. Hadjidemetriou, C. Laoudias and M. K. Michael, "Protection and Communication Model of Intelligent Electronic Devices to Investigate Security Threats," 2023 IEEE Power & Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference (ISGT), Washington, DC, USA, 2023, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/ISGT51731.2023.10066371