A Trust-Management Toolkit for Smart-Grid Protection Systems

This paper discusses the trust-management toolkit, which is a robust and configurable protection system augmentation, which can successfully function in the presence of an untrusted (malfunctioning) smart grid (i.e., communication-based, protection system nodes). The trust-management toolkit combines reputation-based trust with network-flow algorithms to identify and mitigate faulty smart-grid protection nodes. The toolkit assigns trust values to all protection nodes. Faulty nodes, attributed to component or communication system malfunctions (either intentional or unintentional), are assigned a lower trust value, which indicates a higher risk of failure to mitigate detected faults. The utility of the toolkit is demonstrated through simulations comparing “enhanced” backup and special protection systems to original “unenhanced” systems via an analysis of variance analysis. The results show promise for the toolkit in the smart-grid protection system.