When Measurement Constraints Favor Quantum Computational Sensing for Stealthy Power-Grid Attack Detection

Abstract: Power-grid defenses that rely on digital telemetry remain vulnerable to stealthy attacks that preserve plausible reported states while altering the underlying physical system. We study when Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) sensing provides a useful independent physical channel, and when coherent processing before measurement adds value. Across IEEE 14-, 30-, and 118-bus simulations with Lindblad NV models, we evaluate standard FDIA, BDD-stealth, statistical-stealth, and concealed topology attacks. The results reveal an observability hierarchy: evidence shifts from digital telemetry, to reported-versus-physical consistency, to the physical NV state. Quantum Computational Sensing (QCS) follows this selectivity, becoming informative only when the physical state itself carries attack evidence. We then compare QCS, conventional 4-setting NV readout, and tomography under matched measurement budgets. At a matched total budget of only 40 physical trials per sensor on case14, QCS reaches AP $0.944$, versus 0.800 for conventional NV readout and 0.751 for tomography; the same low-budget ordering holds on case30 and case118. Multi-setting methods recover as additional measurements become affordable, showing that the QCS benefit is a measurement-efficiency advantage rather than a universal accuracy advantage. Finally, we ask where the benefit varies across the three case simulations. Although the quantum-to-classical Fisher-information ratio increases from 1.21x to 1.54x, Normal--Attack Helstrom separation collapses in the harder regimes, and interleaved control substantially increases that separation only on case14, thereby quantum sensitivity does not necessarily imply task-relevant distinguishability. Our results show that realized QCS utility depends on the full chain from physical perturbation to state separation, coherent processing, and measurement under the resource constraints of the task.