A Cyber Topology Model for the Texas 2000 Synthetic Electric Power Grid

Numerous works have modeled the synthetic power system network that represents the U.S. electricity transmission system. In this paper, the Texas 2000 synthetic bus model is adopted as a use case; however, the Texas 2000 synthetic bus model only contains the physical elements of the electric grid, such as power buses, substations, and transmission lines. Our research seeks to model the communication infrastructure for this synthetic grid to create a comprehensive cyber-physical model of the electric grid. Our communication model relies on the information gathered from the synthetic power system model as well as the network topologies used in substations, utility control centers, and balancing authorities like the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). A Python program generates the communication model as a collection of JSON objects with lists of nodes and links, similar to the Cyber-Physical Topology Language (CPTL). The nodes represent the cyber components such as routers, firewalls, switches, relay controllers, relays, or remote terminal units (RTUs). The links represent the communication channel types such as microwave links, Ethernet, or MPLS/fiber links. Finally, the proposed communication model is applied to one region in the Texas 2000 synthetic model and Splunk is used to create the visualization for the cyber-physical model of this region.