Investigation of False Data Injection Attacks on Smart Inverter Settings

With drive towards renewable-heavy smart grid, the use of smart inverters to provide grid support services is becoming more attractive. The dynamic operation of smart inverters (SI) are determined by their settings and operating curves. Though, it is generally believed that an attack on the SI settings could have a negative impact on the system, till date, no study has presented any findings. This paper presents an investigation of the potential impact of false data injection (FDI) on SI operation and their impacts on the distribution feeder using real word data from a 1.4 MW PV plant located on the Engineering campus in FIU. A case study of the IEEE 8500 node (which captures the characteristic of actual distribution feeder) with six PVs is investigated. Three SI functions (Volt-VAR, Volt-Watt and constant power factor) are used for FDI attack scenarios. The simulation results show the potential impacts of these attacks on the voltage profiles, overall system looses and the operations of other voltage control legacy devices in the network. The severity of the FDI attacks depends of the prevailing SI functions during the attack.