Resilient Scheduling of Control Software Updates in Power Distribution Systems

• In response to newly found security vulnerabilities, or as part of a moving target defense, a fast and safe control software update scheme for networked control systems is highly desirable. We here develop such a scheme for intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) in power distribution systems, which is a solution to the so-called software update rollout problem. This problem seeks to minimize the makespan of the software rollout, while at the same time guaranteeing acceptable voltage and current levels at all buses despite possible worst-case update failure where malfunctioning IEDs may inject harmful amount of power into the system. Utilizing the nonlinear DistFlow equations, we can rewrite the voltage and current conditions as a set of load and network dependent linear inequalities with respect to the rollout schedule with quantifiable degree of conservatism. Assuming update failure detectors such as out-of-range voltage relays, the optimal software rollout schedule can be time-slotted so that the rollout problem can be reformulated as a variant of the classical combinatorial bin packing problem. Demonstration with a realistic distribution system benchmark is provided to verify the practical significance of our work.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)