A cascading failure model of cyber-coupled power system considering virus propagation

Cyber attacks from the information layer can have a serious impact on the operation of the cyber-coupled power system. In this paper, a practical cascading failure model used for investigating the impact of virus propagation on the cascading failure of cyber-coupled power system is proposed. The model takes into account the actual functionality of cyber-coupled system and the dynamic virus propagation in cyber network, and describes the effects of cyber node failure caused by virus infection and power flow overload on the cascading failure. Moreover, the impact of defense upgrade on the virus propagation is considered. Centralized control based on dispatching center and local regulation based on static power-frequency characteristic are introduced to describe the actual monitoring function of cyber system on the power grid. Then, the effects of defense upgrade strategy and modular community structure on the failure evolution are analyzed. The results indicate that the spread of virus destroys the monitoring function of cyber network on the power network and leads to more serious failure results. The effectiveness of defense upgrade strategies is related to the upgrade probability of information stations. In addition, the stronger community structure of cyber network can improve the robustness of cyber-coupled power system. •A cascading failure model of cyber-coupled power system considering virus propagation is proposed.•A virus propagation model that takes into account network defense upgrade is proposed.•The impact of defense upgrade strategy on the cascading failure of coupled system is investigated.•The impact of modular community structure on the robustness of cyber-coupled system is analyzed.