Effect of communication Time-Delay attacks on the performance of Automatic Generation Control

Communication is the main player in smart grid and the future of power system has been tied to open communication infrastructures. Although communication in power system provides many advantages, it also introduces new challenges which cyber security is one of them. This work studies the effect of Time-Delay (TD) attacks on the performance of Automatic Generation Control (AGC) in a multi-area power system. In this study, a three-area power system is developed and then time delay attacks are simulated to evaluate the performance of the AGC scheme during the attacks. Simulation results show that TD attacks can effectively degrade the performance of the AGC scheme and in some cases even disable it. In addition, it is observed that an area with higher inertia and load damping coefficient has a better AGC performance during TD attacks.