Effects of false data injection attacks on a local P2P energy trading market with prosumers

In the energy sector, peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is a promising method for the future smart grid. Despite all the benefits, this method is vulnerable to some malicious attacks, e.g., false data injection attacks (FDIAs). This paper explores the vulnerability of local P2P energy trading to FDIAs. Previous works on FDIAs in energy neighborhoods consider consumers only, or do not consider the effect of including prosumers. We consider the situation where an attacker tries to modify the participants' demands to gain some benefits. Through simulations using real datasets, we demonstrate possible effects of FDIAs on both selling and buying energy prices in P2P energy trading involving both prosumers and local energy suppliers. From the simulations, we learn that the best chance for an attacker to remain undetected is to target a high number of prosumers and only modify their demand with a small fraction. Moreover, by comparing the results from the attack scenario with the normal situation, we observe that an attack generally leads to less favorable energy prices and thus reduced incentives to become or even remain an energy-selling prosumer.