Harness the Power of DERs for Secure Communications in Electric Energy Systems

Abstract: Electric energy systems are undergoing significant changes to improve system reliability and accommodate increasing power demands. The penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) including roof-top solar panels, energy storage, electric vehicles, etc., enables the on-site generation of economically dispatchable power curtailing operational costs. The effective control of DERs requires communication between utilities and DER system operators. The communication protocols employed for DER management and control lack sophisticated cybersecurity features and can compromise power systems secure operation if malicious control commands are issued to DERs. To overcome authentication-related protocol issues, we present a bolt-on security extension that can be implemented on Distributed Network Protocol v3 (DNP3). We port an authentication framework, DERauth, into DNP3, and utilize real-time measurements from a simulated DER battery energy storage system to enhance communication security. We evaluate our framework in a testbed setup using DNP3 master and outstation devices performing secure authentication by leveraging the entropy of DERs.