CYPRESS: Cyber-physical risk of the bulk electric energy supply system

The Cypress Project

Reliability management of electric power transmission grids is in practice carried out via the so-called N-1 security principle, prescribing to ensure continuity of supply subsequently to the loss of any single transmission system element (lines, transformers, cables).

While probabilistic risk-management has been quite well explored in the scientific literature, and even starts to be used in practice, the interactions of cyber-vulnerabilities with power system physical stability limits has been hardly explored even in the scientific literature. The proper understanding of these interactions is however paramount to correctly manage the reliability of electric energy supply via the transmission grid. Therefore, the overall goal of the CYPRESS project is to contribute to the advancement of science and engineering in cyber-physical reliability management of the transmission grid. We will consider both operation planning decision making horizons (up to years ahead in time) and real-time operation (the last few minutes ahead in time) as two complementary main practical use-cases.

The project’s three main objectives are to:

• improve modelling practice,
• develop novel cyber-physical risk assessment and
• mitigation approaches.

In order to reach its objectives, the project is articulated along three research work packages in order to develop:

• novel models and benchmarks for computer simulation and laboratory testing of the cyber-physical electric power system security of supply,
• techniques for assessing the cyber-physical security of electric energy supply, and
• techniques for enhancing the cyber-physical security of electric energy supply.

Furthermore, an additional longitudinal work package is devoted to the dissemination and exploitation of the results of the project towards the stakeholders, such as the scientific community, energy system regulatory bodies, grid and system operators.

This results in the following work packages:

• WP1: Criteria and benchmarks for cyber-physical risk management
• WP2: Cyber-physical risk assessment of transmission systems
• WP3: Mitigation of cyber-physical security risks
• WP4: Dissemination and recommendations to stakeholders

The role of EnergyVille

KU Leuven / EnergyVille leads the first work package on the definition of reliability and resilience criteria for cyber-physical systems and the creation of benchmark cases for reliability and resilience assessment and management. KU Leuven / EnergyVille develops novel optimization models to enhance the cyber-physical reliability and resilience using a look-ahead approach for the operational planning horizon. The focus is on the coordination of enhancement measures of different stakeholders, such as TSOs, DSOs, generation companies and system service providers. Furthermore, KU Leuven / EnergyVille will also develop specification for testing of the cyber-physical reliability enhancement for a real-time test  environment.