Reliability Modeling and Evaluation of Active Cyber Physical Distribution System

Abstract

To enable an in-depth study of active cyber-physical distribution network, a cyber subsystem model is urgently needed to describe the performance in distribution communication. The methods for quantifying the interactions between subsystems, especially indirect interactions, have not been adequately studied in the existing research. In this paper, a novel model is developed to evaluate the validity of cyber link considering dynamic routing, delay, and communication error, particularly the cyber traffic. Then, an analytical method is presented to quantify the impact of cyber faults considering the functionality validity during distribution automation. And the reliability of cyber and physical subsystems is evaluated based on nonsequential and sequential Monte Carlo methods, respectively. Finally, a test system for reliability evaluation is established to analyze the influences of cyber faults. In addition, sensitivity analyses on the impact of cyber network traffic, element failure rate, and network topology and access communication technology are carried out. The obtained results could provide useful insights into planning and operation of active cyber-physical distribution networks.