Distributed Event-Based Control for Thermostatically Controlled Loads Under Hybrid Cyber Attacks.

Area of Science:

• Control Systems Engineering
• Cybersecurity in Energy Systems
• Smart Grids

Background:

• Building microgrids face power fluctuations from renewable sources and variable loads, impacting grid support.
• Thermostatically Controlled Loads (TCLs) offer aggregated, controllable power consumption for stabilizing power variations.
• Fair sharing of power and comfort states among TCL users is a critical requirement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a distributed, event-based control strategy for TCLs in microgrids.
• To address cybersecurity threats, including Denial-of-Service (DoS) and False Data Injection (FDI) attacks.
• To ensure fair power and comfort state sharing despite communication constraints and attacks.

Main Methods:

• A distributed event-based control strategy exchanging information only when triggered by dynamic events.
• Analysis using Lyapunov stability and hybrid control theories to derive conditions for system resilience.
• Mathematical proof for the exclusion of Zeno behaviors and a corollary for ideal communication.

Main Results:

• The proposed strategy effectively saves communication resources by intelligently adjusting transmission frequency.
• Sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee exponential achievement of fair power and comfort state sharing under hybrid cyberattacks.
• The control strategy demonstrates resilience against DoS and FDI attacks.

Conclusions:

• The developed distributed event-based control strategy ensures robust and fair operation of TCLs in microgrids.
• The findings provide a theoretical framework for secure and efficient management of TCLs under cyber threats.
• Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in diverse attack scenarios.