PNNL

Abstract

The Smart Grid is characterized by the proliferation of advanced digital controllers at all levels of its operational hierarchy from generation to end consumption. Such controllers within modern residential and commercial buildings enable grid operators to exercise fine-grained control over energy consumption through several emerging Buildings-to-Grid (B2G) applications. Though this capability promises significant benefits in terms of operational economics and improved reliability, cybersecurity weaknesses in the supporting infrastructure could be exploited to cause a detrimental effect and this necessitates focused research efforts on two fronts. First, the understanding of how cyber attacks in the B2G space could impact grid reliability and to what extent. Second, the development and validation of cyber-physical application-specific countermeasures that are complementary to traditional infrastructure cybersecurity mechanisms for enhanced cyber attack detection and mitigation. The PNNL B2G testbed is currently being developed to address these core research needs. Specifically, the B2G testbed combines high-fidelity buildings+grid simulators, industry-grade building automation and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems in an integrated, realistic, and reconfigurable environment capable of supporting attack-impact-detection-mitigation experimentation. In this paper, we articulate the need for research testbeds to model various B2G applications broadly by looking at the end-to-end operational hierarchy of the Smart Grid. Finally, the paper not only describes the architecture of the B2G testbed in detail, but also addresses the broad spectrum of B2G resilience research it is capable of supporting based on the smart grid operational hierarchy identified earlier.