PNNL

The nation’s electric grid is a continent-spanning, complex machine that underpins our nation’s economic and national security. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has decades of experience in research and development (R&D) for energy reliability and grid modernization, creating advanced technologies and developing modeling and planning tools to help utilities make operational decisions, optimize the utilization of resources improving the affordability of energy, and avoid major grid disruptions, such as those realized during natural disasters.

In addition, PNNL specializes in R&D for national security, developing science-based solutions that protect America from dynamic threats, such as cyber and nuclear to chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. As adversaries gain access to sophisticated technologies and materials, these threats grow even more complex—and this, coupled with the accelerating changes in grid dynamics, is revealing critical vulnerabilities in our bulk electric system (BES).

Today, there is inadequate visibility of the underlying dynamics and health of the BES and its necessary support infrastructures, which would be needed to inform appropriate and necessary decision-making to thwart or mitigate a coordinated attack by a nation-state adversary. PNNL’s unique combination of capabilities in AI, power systems engineering, grid reliability, and national security enable us to look holistically at this growing challenge. We are taking the lead to help establish and maintain U.S. energy dominance by creating a state-of-the-art national energy security operations center, which will enable a federated national capability across the national laboratory complex. Accordingly, PNNL is developing an Enhanced Visibility & Event Response capability (EVE@PNNL), which will notably improve our nation’s ability to prevent and withstand attacks on our critical infrastructure.

EVE@PNNL will:

• Employ AI enhanced analytics of real-world data to develop novel sensing and monitoring capibilities that can inform operational response capabilities from AI-enabled control centers to grid edge systems.
• Use AI-informed, adaptive grid controls and protection schemes that enable anomaly detection and response, such as autonomous reconfiguration and controlled islanding from the BES.
• Specifically target adversarial stimuli, such as cyber intrusion physics-based and physical attacks, and communication manipulation.

The initial site of EVE@PNNL’s footprint will be the laboratory’s Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center, which consists of two control rooms that mirror real-world grid operations. That footprint will expand to PNNL’s new National Security Research Center, currently under construction at PNNL’s Richland, Washington, campus. The federated capability will be realized through collaboration with other national laboratories, federal agencies, power marketing administrations, and industry owners and operators of Defense Critical Electric Infrastructure assets.

This effort is aligned with PNNL’s support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, which is developing a powerful AI platform to accelerate scientific discovery, drive energy innovation, and strengthen national security.