Attack-resilient and communication-efficient distributed secondary control of distributed energy resources in microgrids: Methods and hardware-in-the-loop validations

Secondary control of distributed energy resources (DERs) in AC microgrids (MGs) is critical for system stable operation, requiring a secure and efficient communication network. Although advanced information technologies enable numerous DERs coordination and enhance secondary frequency and power performances of MGs, they also increase communication burdens and expand the attack surface, exposing MGs to deceptive cyber attacks (DCAs). These attacks can disrupt resource coordination and even lead to potential MG system outages. To this end, we propose an attack-resilient and communication-efficient distributed secondary control (ArCeDSC) method for DERs to guarantee secure operation even under DCAs while reducing communication burden. First, a formulation of MG is established based on the large-signal model to achieve high-fidelity characterization of system dynamics. Within this formulation, a novel distributed secure sliding surface is developed for MGs operating over directed communication networks, enabling the closed-loop structure to inherently reject falsified signals. On this basis, a resilient distributed control protocol is proposed to force the MG system’s secondary frequency and power trajectories onto this secure surface, thereby completely eliminating the impacts of diverse DCAs. Moreover, a fully distributed event-triggered mechanism is proposed without relying on any global information or continuous monitoring to significantly reduce the communication burden and its exposure surface to DCAs. Furthermore, rigorous proofs are presented for the convergence properties, finite-time reachability, and Zeno-free behavior. Finally, compared with existing methods, comparative simulations and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) experimental results validate the superior communication-efficient and attack-resilient performance.