Keeping Hackers Off the Electrical Grid

Biggest issue.

Keeping Hackers Off the Electrical Grid

By R. Colin Johnson

Commissioned by CACM Staff, June 20, 2023

ORNL researchers showed how to encode grid operating data into a unique color pattern hidden inside a single video frame, which can be transmitted to a grid control center computer using a Fibonacci sequence to encode/decode each sensor reading.

Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

As attacks on grid substations increase—by 70% in 2022 alone, according to the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)—engineers there are anticipating new attack vectors and taking measures to protect from hackers using them.

"As researchers, we try to stay ahead of cyber threats, not just react to them after they occur," said ORNL's Peter Fuhr, who heads its Grid Communications and Security group. Fuhr's group recently demonstrated a new method of using a rotating color wheel to encode grid sensor data subliminally into a video feed, and using a novel Fibonacci sequence decoding key that rotates the color-wheel so each sensor reading uses a unique color code.

"ORNL has invented a compelling method to protect our critical grid infrastructure that builds upon known encryption technology," said Sterling Rooke, chief executive officer (CEO) of Brixon Inc. (Baltimore) , a company that manufactures electrical power monitoring instruments. "With the right application, there will be a need for this novel implementation—a kind of steganography that conceals critical information within the existing live video feeds from the grid substations themselves."

The technique, Fuhr says, translates the encrypted character codes utilities use today to a color-code hidden in video feeds from cameras that already monitor substation activity. EPB (formerly the Electric Power Board, Chattanooga, TN) successfully tested the technique for six months using a virtual local area network (VLAN) link between the central-EPB grid control center and its substations. "We proved the concept in the lab at ORNL, then extended the testing to a nearby substation, and eventually installed the color encoding/decoding equipment at both the EPB substation and its central-control computer," said Fuhr. "It's the real deal—tested and proven."

According to Fuhr, EPB and most industrial process control architectures in the U.S. follow the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) SP800-82 guidelines for all industrial process control (IPC) systems—including factories, manufacturing, and automated testing, as well as the grid. His color encoding/decoding technique will work not only for grid communications from a grid central control computer to its substations, but for any operational technology (OT). In fact, several private companies have already shown interest in licensing his color-coding architecture, according to Fuhr.

Historically, Internet connections have offered an entry point for sophisticated hackers to insert malware into substations, which are almost universally run by SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) networks, which date back to the 1950s, when cybersecurity wasn't even a word. Even today, SCADA networks typically do not require any authentication to remotely execute commands on a control device. To solve most vulnerabilities, the NIST guidelines forbid the central control computer—which is typically connected to corporate IT—to extend Internet availability to the SCADA control system. NIST-compliant SCADA architectures are isolated from the Internet by firewalls that instead run a multi-channel virtual local area network (VLAN) to substations connected to its central control computers. Likewise, communicating data from sensors and to actuators run on different channels of the VLAN. Most operations are programmable, but run autonomously at unmanned substations; human operators can also use a graphical user interface (GUI) for high-level configuration and supervision of remote machines and processes.

Over the years as cybersecurity has become an increasingly important issue, many hacker-resilient modifications have been added to SCADA architectures. These security measures, however, have not been universally applied. The result has been numerous attacks dating back to 2000, when a disgruntled former employee took control of the Maroochy Shire sewage OT system in Queensland, Australia, using a single computer and a radio transmitter. Since the commercialization of the Internet, many hackers have attacked process control systems, including utilities, forcing new (and retrofit) SCADA industrial protocols to segment their networks with gateways, routers, one-way-only data-diodes, and white-listing that only passes traffic of a single type down each VLAN channel. In addition, VLAN channels are only bi-directional when they need to be, are segmented so they can only communicate with devices with which they were meant to communicate, and are not allowed to connect to the central corporate network without at least a firewall (for maximum security, with two firewalls on each side of a DMZ (demilitarized zone) server that securely forwards communications).  ... ' 

An Electric Connection: Homes Helping the Grid

Appliance connections.

Home Helping the Grid.  By Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. May 26, 2022

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the University of Oklahoma have invented technology that could reduce strain on the national power grid by controlling residential appliances more efficiently.

PNNL's Michael Brambley said the project sought an affordable, easy-to-install system that residents control, and which households are incentivized to adopt through "a more favorable electricity rate."

The researchers designed the system with smart technology firms pecobee and Shifted Energy, to transform electric resistance furnaces, electric resistance water heaters, heat pumps, and air conditioners into smart appliances that are connected to the grid and managed on demand.

Brambley explained that the retrofitable system "is designed for the millions of homes that could benefit from this method but don't prefer or can't afford to buy smart appliances."

From Pacific Northwest National Laboratory  Full article. 

EV and Related Topics from IEEE

Brought to my attention, with particular attention to solar aspects. 

Solar-Charged Electric Vehicles: A Comprehensive Analysis of Grid, Driver, and Environmental Benefits

Publisher: IEEE

Abstract:

To date, solar-powered electric vehicles (EVs) have often been considered as niche projects or with small vehicle rooftop panels that can slightly extend the electric driving range. This article proposes a large-scale solar EV concept with low-cost, flexible, and thin-film solar cells integrated onto the steel of all upward-facing vehicle body panels as a viable solution to help mitigate EV charging and range concerns and the high cost and solar power intermittency of individual residential rooftop solar installations. Only by considering the full range of benefits, namely to the grid, driver, and environment, the value of solar-charged EVs can truly be appreciated. This article models the effect of panel tilt and partial shading on the solar energy capture of 150 drivers to analyze grid, driver, and environmental benefits in Los Angeles (LA) and Detroit over the course of a full year. The simulations predict net annual vehicle energy use reductions of 21.5% in LA and 17.5% in Detroit for average cloud conditions, compared to a nonsolar EV.

Published in: IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification ( Volume: 7, Issue: 2, June 2021)

Page(s): 579 - 603  Date of Publication: 21 May 2020 

ISSN Information:   INSPEC Accession Number: 20968310

DOI: 10.1109/TTE.2020.2996363     Publisher: IEEE   .... 

Model to Find Best EV Charging Sites

Something we will need to start to consider. 

Model Finds Best Sites for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

NC State University News, Matt Shipman, June 6, 2022

North Carolina State University (NC State) researchers have developed a computational model that finds the best sites for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, and the amount of power they can use without straining the local grid. The model's power system component factors in the limitations of the local power distribution network, while its transportation component considers number of travelers, the routes they take, and how far their vehicles can go before they must recharge. The model also attempts to identify locations that will minimize travel times, in order to account for user decision-making. NC State's Leila Hajibabai said, "Ultimately, we feel the model can be used to inform the development of EV charging infrastructure at multiple levels, from projects aimed at supporting local commuters to charging facilities that serve interstate highway travel."

Full Article

Watson Addressing Grid Failures

 Important domain to cover.  

MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab Tackles Power Grid Failures with AI  in Datanami   By Jaime Hampton

Next time your power stays on during a severe weather event, you may have a machine learning model to thank.

Researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab are using artificial intelligence to solve power grid failures. The manager of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, Jie Chen, and his colleagues have developed a machine learning model that works to analyze data collected from hundreds of thousands of sensors located across the U.S. power grid.

The sensors, components of what is known as synchrophasor technology, compile vast amounts of real-time data related to electric current and voltage in order to monitor the health of the grid and locate anomalies that could cause outages.

Synchrophasor analysis requires intensive computational resources due to the size and real-time nature of the data streams the sensors produce. There can be difficulty with quickly extracting data for anomaly detection, or the “task of identifying unusual samples that significantly deviate from the majority of the data instances,” as defined in the researchers’ paper.

The ML model can be trained without annotated data on power grid anomalies, which is advantageous because much of the data collected by the sensors is unstructured.

“In the case of a power grid, people have tried to capture the data using statistics and then define detection rules with domain knowledge to say that, for example, if the voltage surges by a certain percentage, then the grid operator should be alerted. Such rule-based systems, even empowered by statistical data analysis, require a lot of labor and expertise. We show that we can automate this process and also learn patterns from the data using advanced machine-learning techniques,” said Chen in an MIT News article. .... '

Alternate Electrical Flow Routing

Networks and flows for robust systems.

Robust Routing Using Electrical Flows  in Google Research

Friday, February 18, 2022

Posted by Ali Kemal Sinop and Kostas Kollias, Research Scientists, Google Research

In the world of networks, there are models that can explain observations across a diverse collection of applications. These include simple tasks such as computing the shortest path, which has obvious applications to routing networks but also applies in biology, e.g., where the slime mold Physarum is able to find shortest paths in mazes. Another example is Braess’s paradox — the observation that adding resources to a network can have an effect opposite to the one expected — which manifests not only in road networks but also in mechanical and electrical systems. For instance, constructing a new road can increase traffic congestion or adding a new link in an electrical circuit can increase voltage. Such connections between electrical circuits and other types of networks have been exploited for various tasks, such as partitioning networks, and routing flows.

In “Robust Routing Using Electrical Flows”, which won the Best Paper Award at SIGSPATIAL 2021, we present another interesting application of electrical flows in the context of road network routing. Specifically, we utilize ideas from electrical flows for the problem of constructing multiple alternate routes between a given source and destination. Alternate routes are important for many use cases, including finding routes that best match user preferences and for robust routing, e.g., routing that guarantees finding a good path in the presence of traffic jams. Along the way, we also describe how to quickly model electrical flows on road networks.

Existing Approaches to Alternate Routing

Computing alternate routes on road networks is a relatively new area of research and most techniques rely on one of two main templates: the penalty method and the plateau method. In the former, alternate routes are iteratively computed by running a shortest path algorithm and then, in subsequent runs, adding a penalty to those segments already included in the shortest paths that have been computed, to encourage further exploration. In the latter, two shortest path trees are built simultaneously, one starting from the origin and one from the destination, which are used to identify sequences of road segments that are common to both trees. Each such common sequence (which are expected to be important arterial streets for example) is then treated as a visit point on the way from the origin to the destination, thus potentially producing an alternate route. The penalty method is known to produce results of high quality (i.e., average travel time, diversity and robustness of the returned set of alternate routes) but is very slow in practice, whereas the plateau method is much faster but results in lower quality solutions. ... ' 

AI to Keep the Lights on?

 This deserves a deeper dive, especially if you are into complex modeling of the operation of systems.  The contest is over, but by examining the overview of the statement of the problem, I was impressed.  I am continuing to review.   Was particularly interested if they could model and minimize  or potentially re design Power Grids for events like solar CMEs. An ultimate grid security issue. Could this be a starting point? Anyone know?  We worked with Los Alamos and they were impressive. 

Los Alamos scientists take top prizes in national competition to help improve electrical grid

Artificial intelligence-driven algorithms could help keep the lights on

Los Alamos, N.M., Oct. 4, 2021—Two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory took top prizes in a national competition for developing algorithms to help improve the resiliency and efficiency of the electrical grid. The algorithm developed by Hassan Hijazi of the Applied Mathematics and Plasma Physics Group took first place in all four divisions, while the one developed by Carleton Coffrin of the Laboratory’s Information Systems and Modeling Group placed second in two of the four divisions. Their work outperformed 14 other entries in the competition:   https://gocompetition.energy.gov/   funded by Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), a United States government agency that promotes and funds research and development of advanced energy technologies.

“Grid security is a national security issue, which is why this is important work for Los Alamos,” said Nancy Jo Nicholas, associate Laboratory director for Global Security at Los Alamos. “Every five minutes, optimization problems arise in the U.S. electrical grid that require a mathematical solution. Hassan’s and Carleton’s achievement will help advance national efforts to create a more reliable, resilient, and secure electrical grid.”  ...