Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are growing in importance Power Systems. Battery Electrical S... more Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are growing in importance Power Systems. Battery Electrical Storage Systems (BESS) represent fundamental tools in order to balance the unpredictable power production of some Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Nevertheless, BESS are usually remotely controlled by SCADA systems, so they are prone to cyberattacks. This paper analyzes the vulnerabilities of BESS and proposes an anomaly detection algorithm that, by observing the physical behavior of the system, aims to promptly detect dangerous working conditions by exploiting the capabilities of a particular neural network architecture called the autoencoder. The results show the performance of the proposed approach with respect to the traditional One Class Support Vector Machine algorithm.
The paper describes a decision-making exploratory modelling approach to simulate different situat... more The paper describes a decision-making exploratory modelling approach to simulate different situations leading to a sustainable consumption of energy. An Agent Based Model (ABM) is proposed in order to study the individual and collective behavioural changes toward environmental sustainability using ICT-based services, the SAM4SN (Spread of Awareness Model for Social Norms) model. It explores the role of awareness in the consumption of a resource. Simulating how environmental awareness spreads is an interdisciplinary issue that involves ICT, energy and environmental science, as well as social and behavioural sciences. The agents of SAM4SN represent households whose consumption of energy has to be reduced. Agents influence each other. Such influence improves their awareness that, in turn, impacts on resource consumption. The social influence plays an important role in spreading awareness. The model includes the role of smart metering functions. The role of the sustainability tipping po...
Critical Infrastructures (CIs) are sensible targets. They could be physically damaged by natural ... more Critical Infrastructures (CIs) are sensible targets. They could be physically damaged by natural or human actions, causing service disruptions, economic losses, and, in some extreme cases, harm to people. They, therefore, need a high level of protection against possible unintentional and intentional events. In this paper, we show a logical architecture that exploits information from both physical and cybersecurity systems to improve the overall security in a power plant scenario. We propose a Machine Learning (ML)-based anomaly detection approach to detect possible anomaly events by jointly correlating data related to both the physical and cyber domains. The performance evaluation showed encouraging results—obtained by different ML algorithms—which highlights how our proposed approach is able to detect possible abnormal situations that could not have been detected by using only information from either the physical or cyber domain.
Microgrids are growing in importance in the Smart Grid paradigm for power systems. Microgrid secu... more Microgrids are growing in importance in the Smart Grid paradigm for power systems. Microgrid security is becoming crucial since these systems increasingly rely on information and communication technologies. Many technologies have been proposed in the last few years for the protection of industrial control systems, ranging from cryptography, network security, security monitoring systems, and innovative control strategies resilient to cyber-attacks. Still, electrical systems and microgrids present their own peculiarities, and some effort has to be put forth to apply cyber-protection technologies in the electrical sector. In the present work, we discuss the latest advancements and research trends in the field of microgrid cybersecurity in a tutorial form.
Proceedings of CEM 2002 - 4th International Conference on Computation in Electromagnetics, 2002
ABSTRACT An effective method to evaluate the field coupling to a line of finite length has been p... more ABSTRACT An effective method to evaluate the field coupling to a line of finite length has been presented in this paper. It allows analyzing structures typically solved by means of the TL method even when the assumptions about the absence of the common mode current and about the TEM (or quasi-TEM) propagation mode (which implies the constraints on the line transverse dimensions with respect both to the line length and to the minimum field wavelength) are disregarded.
The paper discusses the impact of social interaction on individual and collective behaviors and i... more The paper discusses the impact of social interaction on individual and collective behaviors and its effect on the consumption of energy. The underlying hypothesis is that ICT tools enable societal and psychological mechanisms leading to sustainable lifestyles. We envision tools supporting social norms, i.e. rules governing an individual\u2019s behavior by social sanctions that encourage sustainable behavior on the part of user and consumers. We present SAM4SN (Spread of Awareness Model for Social Norms), an Agent-Based Model (ABM) to explore the role of awareness in the consumption of a resource. Agents represent households that use a resource \u2013 e.g. energy or water \u2013 whose consumption has to be reduced. Agents influence each other and such influence improves their awareness that, in turn, influences resource consumption. Social influence and the role of smart metering functions as awareness's catalyst are described. SAM4SN is an exploratory model to play and explore different situations, leading or not to a sustainable consumption of energy. In particular, the sustainability tipping point and its role in decision-making will be introduced
2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering (EEEIC), 2015
The present contribution proposes an adaptive two-step Energy Management System (EMS) for the opt... more The present contribution proposes an adaptive two-step Energy Management System (EMS) for the optimal operation of the Savona Campus Smart Polygeneration Microgrid (SPM). The first step aims at performing an economical optimization, as it provides the active power set-point for the programmable units that minimizes the overall production cost. The second step is related to power quality issues (power factor correction or voltage support), as it produces in output the reactive power reference signal for all the devices under converter. Moreover, due to the presence of uncertainties in the electric and thermal load request and in the Renewable Energy Sources (RES) power production, an update forecasting logic is proposed that, applied at each time step of the optimization process, refines the forecast accuracy. The experimental validation performed on the SPM shows the efficacy of the proposed EMS in satisfying both the economic and the power quality objectives.
This paper addresses the issue of the analysis of t he effects of lightning flashes (direct and i... more This paper addresses the issue of the analysis of t he effects of lightning flashes (direct and indirec t) on power grid HV substations, in terms of the evaluation of overvoltage/overcurrent waveforms reaching the devices which could be potentially more afflicted by such d isturbances, namely the power transformers (or autotransformers). The study is mainly devoted to i dentify the more suitable models, methodologies and investigation tools to carry out transient evaluati ons on HV substations (1) with the final aim to def ine a calculation platform into the PSCAD-EMTDC electromagnetic environment (2) for the simulation of real p ower grid configurations. To investigate the cause of lightning failures of i nterconnection (auto)transformers, the first issue to be considered is the definition of suitable high frequ ency (HF) models for all the components of the power system under analysis (Fig. 1) and the development of tech niques for fitting the model parameters with rated character...
ABSTRACT The Cooray-Rubinstein (CR) formula is one of the most popular techniques used to take in... more ABSTRACT The Cooray-Rubinstein (CR) formula is one of the most popular techniques used to take into account the finite ground conductivity in the evaluation of the radial component of the lightning return stroke electric field. Nevertheless, one difficulty lies in its application: as it is expressed in the frequency domain, it can be difficult to code it in time domain simulation programs for lightning-induced overvoltages analysis. The paper shows how a suitable rational approximation of the impedance term appearing in the CR formula can lead to a simple time domain implementation of this formula. The proposed implementation offers a considerably higher computational efficiency than that of conventional methods.
ABSTRACT The most critical point in the implementation on a vector computer of iterative methods ... more ABSTRACT The most critical point in the implementation on a vector computer of iterative methods to solve sparse linear algebraic systems is the sparse matrix-vector product. Therefor we have compared its performance under three different sparse matrix storage schemes found in literature. These schemes have been tested on a FPS M64/330 using matrices similar to those arising in finite element or finite difference discretizations.The results are reported and discussed. On the basis of them a new storage scheme is proposed and tested in similar situations. The obtained performance is never worse and often much better than those of the other schemes we have analyzed.
Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are growing in importance Power Systems. Battery Electrical S... more Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are growing in importance Power Systems. Battery Electrical Storage Systems (BESS) represent fundamental tools in order to balance the unpredictable power production of some Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Nevertheless, BESS are usually remotely controlled by SCADA systems, so they are prone to cyberattacks. This paper analyzes the vulnerabilities of BESS and proposes an anomaly detection algorithm that, by observing the physical behavior of the system, aims to promptly detect dangerous working conditions by exploiting the capabilities of a particular neural network architecture called the autoencoder. The results show the performance of the proposed approach with respect to the traditional One Class Support Vector Machine algorithm.
The paper describes a decision-making exploratory modelling approach to simulate different situat... more The paper describes a decision-making exploratory modelling approach to simulate different situations leading to a sustainable consumption of energy. An Agent Based Model (ABM) is proposed in order to study the individual and collective behavioural changes toward environmental sustainability using ICT-based services, the SAM4SN (Spread of Awareness Model for Social Norms) model. It explores the role of awareness in the consumption of a resource. Simulating how environmental awareness spreads is an interdisciplinary issue that involves ICT, energy and environmental science, as well as social and behavioural sciences. The agents of SAM4SN represent households whose consumption of energy has to be reduced. Agents influence each other. Such influence improves their awareness that, in turn, impacts on resource consumption. The social influence plays an important role in spreading awareness. The model includes the role of smart metering functions. The role of the sustainability tipping po...
Critical Infrastructures (CIs) are sensible targets. They could be physically damaged by natural ... more Critical Infrastructures (CIs) are sensible targets. They could be physically damaged by natural or human actions, causing service disruptions, economic losses, and, in some extreme cases, harm to people. They, therefore, need a high level of protection against possible unintentional and intentional events. In this paper, we show a logical architecture that exploits information from both physical and cybersecurity systems to improve the overall security in a power plant scenario. We propose a Machine Learning (ML)-based anomaly detection approach to detect possible anomaly events by jointly correlating data related to both the physical and cyber domains. The performance evaluation showed encouraging results—obtained by different ML algorithms—which highlights how our proposed approach is able to detect possible abnormal situations that could not have been detected by using only information from either the physical or cyber domain.
Microgrids are growing in importance in the Smart Grid paradigm for power systems. Microgrid secu... more Microgrids are growing in importance in the Smart Grid paradigm for power systems. Microgrid security is becoming crucial since these systems increasingly rely on information and communication technologies. Many technologies have been proposed in the last few years for the protection of industrial control systems, ranging from cryptography, network security, security monitoring systems, and innovative control strategies resilient to cyber-attacks. Still, electrical systems and microgrids present their own peculiarities, and some effort has to be put forth to apply cyber-protection technologies in the electrical sector. In the present work, we discuss the latest advancements and research trends in the field of microgrid cybersecurity in a tutorial form.
Proceedings of CEM 2002 - 4th International Conference on Computation in Electromagnetics, 2002
ABSTRACT An effective method to evaluate the field coupling to a line of finite length has been p... more ABSTRACT An effective method to evaluate the field coupling to a line of finite length has been presented in this paper. It allows analyzing structures typically solved by means of the TL method even when the assumptions about the absence of the common mode current and about the TEM (or quasi-TEM) propagation mode (which implies the constraints on the line transverse dimensions with respect both to the line length and to the minimum field wavelength) are disregarded.
The paper discusses the impact of social interaction on individual and collective behaviors and i... more The paper discusses the impact of social interaction on individual and collective behaviors and its effect on the consumption of energy. The underlying hypothesis is that ICT tools enable societal and psychological mechanisms leading to sustainable lifestyles. We envision tools supporting social norms, i.e. rules governing an individual\u2019s behavior by social sanctions that encourage sustainable behavior on the part of user and consumers. We present SAM4SN (Spread of Awareness Model for Social Norms), an Agent-Based Model (ABM) to explore the role of awareness in the consumption of a resource. Agents represent households that use a resource \u2013 e.g. energy or water \u2013 whose consumption has to be reduced. Agents influence each other and such influence improves their awareness that, in turn, influences resource consumption. Social influence and the role of smart metering functions as awareness's catalyst are described. SAM4SN is an exploratory model to play and explore different situations, leading or not to a sustainable consumption of energy. In particular, the sustainability tipping point and its role in decision-making will be introduced
2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering (EEEIC), 2015
The present contribution proposes an adaptive two-step Energy Management System (EMS) for the opt... more The present contribution proposes an adaptive two-step Energy Management System (EMS) for the optimal operation of the Savona Campus Smart Polygeneration Microgrid (SPM). The first step aims at performing an economical optimization, as it provides the active power set-point for the programmable units that minimizes the overall production cost. The second step is related to power quality issues (power factor correction or voltage support), as it produces in output the reactive power reference signal for all the devices under converter. Moreover, due to the presence of uncertainties in the electric and thermal load request and in the Renewable Energy Sources (RES) power production, an update forecasting logic is proposed that, applied at each time step of the optimization process, refines the forecast accuracy. The experimental validation performed on the SPM shows the efficacy of the proposed EMS in satisfying both the economic and the power quality objectives.
This paper addresses the issue of the analysis of t he effects of lightning flashes (direct and i... more This paper addresses the issue of the analysis of t he effects of lightning flashes (direct and indirec t) on power grid HV substations, in terms of the evaluation of overvoltage/overcurrent waveforms reaching the devices which could be potentially more afflicted by such d isturbances, namely the power transformers (or autotransformers). The study is mainly devoted to i dentify the more suitable models, methodologies and investigation tools to carry out transient evaluati ons on HV substations (1) with the final aim to def ine a calculation platform into the PSCAD-EMTDC electromagnetic environment (2) for the simulation of real p ower grid configurations. To investigate the cause of lightning failures of i nterconnection (auto)transformers, the first issue to be considered is the definition of suitable high frequ ency (HF) models for all the components of the power system under analysis (Fig. 1) and the development of tech niques for fitting the model parameters with rated character...
ABSTRACT The Cooray-Rubinstein (CR) formula is one of the most popular techniques used to take in... more ABSTRACT The Cooray-Rubinstein (CR) formula is one of the most popular techniques used to take into account the finite ground conductivity in the evaluation of the radial component of the lightning return stroke electric field. Nevertheless, one difficulty lies in its application: as it is expressed in the frequency domain, it can be difficult to code it in time domain simulation programs for lightning-induced overvoltages analysis. The paper shows how a suitable rational approximation of the impedance term appearing in the CR formula can lead to a simple time domain implementation of this formula. The proposed implementation offers a considerably higher computational efficiency than that of conventional methods.
ABSTRACT The most critical point in the implementation on a vector computer of iterative methods ... more ABSTRACT The most critical point in the implementation on a vector computer of iterative methods to solve sparse linear algebraic systems is the sparse matrix-vector product. Therefor we have compared its performance under three different sparse matrix storage schemes found in literature. These schemes have been tested on a FPS M64/330 using matrices similar to those arising in finite element or finite difference discretizations.The results are reported and discussed. On the basis of them a new storage scheme is proposed and tested in similar situations. The obtained performance is never worse and often much better than those of the other schemes we have analyzed.
Uploads
Papers by Paola Girdinio