A cyber-physical security testbed for smart grid: system architecture and studies

The Smart Grid brings with it many new data collection, communication, and information sharing capabilities in the power system, along with new privacy threats, vulnerabilities and the associated cyber attack risks. The lack of traditional modeling tools and the need for accurate security evaluation has prompted the use of testbeds for cyber physical systems research in power grid. The paper describes the key properties needed for a testbed and provides a methodology to classify testbed architectures. The paper also presents the testbed architecture implemented at Iowa State University, known as the PowerCyber testbed. It elaborates briefly on the testbed capabilities and preliminary results, along with some practical challenges faced in the development of the testbed.