Anomaly Detection for Control Centers

The control center is a critical location in the power system infrastructure. Decisions regarding the power system’s operation and control are often made from the control center. These control actions are made possible through SCADA communication. This capability however makes the power system vulnerable to cyber attacks. Most of the decisions taken by the control center dwell on the measurement data received from substations. These measurements estimate the state of the power grid. Measurement-based cyber attacks have been well studied to be a major threat to control center operations. Stealthy false data injection attacks are known to evade bad data detection. Due to the limitations with bad data detection at the control center, a lot of approaches have been explored especially in the cyber layer to detect measurement-based attacks. Though helpful, these approaches do not look at the physical layer. This study proposes an anomaly detection system for the control center that operates on the laws of physics. The system also identifies the specific falsified measurement and proposes its estimated measurement value.