Cyber Attacks on Distributed Congestion Management Methods

With the increased dependency on Demand Side Management (DSM) for congestion mitigation in the distribution network (DN), cyber physical security of such congestion management methods need to be investigated. DSM based distributed congestion management methods rely on the aggregators' communication of consumers load profiles to the distribution network operator (DNO). Compromising the aggregator would hence affect the congestion management results. To gain insights into the vulnerability of such congestion management methods, different cyber attack scenarios are studied in this paper assuming a compromised aggregator. Simulation results, based on the IEEE 33 bus system, show how the electricity prices can be manipulated by attacks that increase the load profiles faking congestion. On the other hand, a multiplicative attack that decreases an aggregator's load profile would cause the concealment of congestions when in reality the line is overloaded. These results demonstrate the vulnerability of such congestion management methods to cyber attacks.