ANGEL: An Intelligent Digital Twin Framework for Microgrid Security

The ANGEL Digital Twin for Cyber-Physical System Security is a novel approach for improving the security of critical and non-critical infrastructure. Digital Twin technology, widely used in the aviation, manufacturing and automotive industries, has the potential to improve the security and resiliency of the microgrid. In this paper, we present a framework for adapting the Digital Twin to the application of microgrid security. The Digital Twin is a real-time, physics-based simulation that runs alongside the physical system providing for its constant monitoring and control. The Automatic Network Guardian for ELectrical systems, or ANGEL, will model both the cyber and physical layers of the microgrid and provide real-time data visualization. As a result, users will be aided in assessing the health of the physical plant and overall behavior over a range of operating conditions. The ANGEL Digital Twin will be able to use the real-time two-way coupling between the simulation and physical system to update and evolve the simulation to provide greater insight into the physical system. Ultimately ANGEL will provide the ability to diagnose and heal the physical system, mitigating both component failures and the effects of cyber attack. This paper will explain the methodology behind the design of this digital twin and the advantages of such an approach. To demonstrate the current capabilities of the ANGEL framework as a Level III digital twin, a simulation example is presented on the IEEE 39-bus benchmark.