Theses and Dissertations Collection

Maintaining the stability, reliability, and most importantly, the cyber-security of the

power grid is becoming more complicated as the demands placed on the power system grows

steadily as do cyber threats. As the demand placed on power system increases, a modern

power system is more likely to operate near its secure limit. Due to the cost implications of

building more plants and transmission lines to make the power system robust, the already

installed infrastructure is usually operated closer to its secure operating limits. Deployment

of Remedial Action Schemes (RAS) is a viable economical alternative to maintain operational

security when the construction of new infrastructure is not desirable. It is also important

to ensure that the deployed RAS scheme is protected from cyber-attacks intended to make

it mis-operate, whereby it would make the power grid even more vulnerable to cascading

failure.

In this thesis, two RAS schemes were designed, modelled and deployed to improve the

resilience, reliability and stability of the power system. The first RAS scheme is designed to

improve the transient stability index of the system when critical events capable of driving

the system to cascading failure occur. The second RAS scheme is designed to be immune to

data measurement cyber threats. The second RAS scheme should operate correctly even in

the presence of false data in the power grid. Both RAS models were deployed and tested on

the WECC 179 bus test system.