IEEE Smart Grid October 2018 – Robustness Assessment of Interdependent Gas and Electric Power Transmission Systems Against Cyber Threats

smart_grid_logo

Newsletter October 2018

Robustness Assessment of Interdependent Gas and Electric Power Transmission Systems Against Cyber Threats

By Jose M. Yusta and Jesus Beyza

In 2018 hackers gained access to the control centers of US electric utilities, allowing them to control the status of switches and affect the power flow. IEEE PES Task Force on Understanding, Prediction, Mitigation and Restoration of Cascading Failures has addressed graph theory as an emerging technology on the vulnerability assessment of cascading failures. In this exact sense, we develop a robustness assessment of highly interdependent gas and electric power transmission systems applying a cascading failure methodology based on graph theory in complex networks. A real 400-kV electricity transmission network and an 80-bar natural gas transmission network have been jointly evaluated by means of a graph composed of 2031 nodes and 2154 links. The deliberate disintegration of the tightly coupled networks would only require eliminating approximately 1% of the nodes, confirming the weakness of the energy infrastructures against new cyber threats.

(VER TEXTO COMPLETO)