A review of cyber security risks of power systems: from static to dynamic false data attacks

Abstract With the rapid development of the smart grid and increasingly integrated communication networks, power grids are facing serious cyber-security problems. This paper reviews existing studies on the impact of false data injection attacks on power systems from three aspects. First, false data injection can adversely affect economic dispatch by increasing the operational cost of the power system or causing sequential overloads and even outages. Second, attackers can inject false data to the power system state estimator, and this will prevent the operators from obtaining the true operating conditions of the system. Third, false data injection attacks can degrade the distributed control of distributed generators or microgrids inducing a power imbalance between supply and demand. This paper fully covers the potential vulnerabilities of power systems to cyber-attacks to help system operators understand the system vulnerability and take effective countermeasures.