Investigating the impact of cyber attacks on power system reliability

As power grids rely more on the open communication technologies and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, they are becoming more vulnerable to malicious cyber attacks. The reliability of the power system can be impacted by the SCADA system due to a diverse set of probable cyber attacks on it. This paper deals with the impact of cyber attacks on power system reliability. A forced outage rate (FOR) model is proposed considering the impacts of cyber attacks on the reliability characteristic of generators and transmission lines. Different occurrences of the cyber attacks targeting the SCADA system lead to different effects on the FOR values. The loss of load probabilities (LOLP) curves in two reliability test systems are simulated based on 10 different types of attacks in the SCADA system. The simulation results illustrate that the reliability of the power system decreases as the effects of cyber attacks on SCADA become severe.