Performance of Electric Power Systems Under Physical Malicious Attacks

This paper focuses on deliberate acts aimed at the disruption of the electric power infrastructure and their impact on its operational capability. Metrics derived from complex network theory and social network analysis are used to identify the important elements of the electric power transmission grid. Using the outcomes of this screening procedure as a guide, a number of physical attack scenarios have been fabricated and applied. The nature of these scenarios is either deterministic (targeted attacks) or stochastic (sets of elements are randomly attacked). We appraise the effect of these attacks on the serviceability of the electric power system by modeling of potential cascading events through calculation of transmission grid components' loading, a Monte Carlo simulation of hidden failures, and, finally, operator performance analysis based on a simple human reliability model. The effect of each attack scenario is quantified in terms of the blackout size (electric-power-not-served). To illustrate the application of the developed model to the security assessment of targeted physical attacks against the electric power infrastructure, the Swiss transmission grid is taken as the test system.