Nonlinear Controller-Based Mitigation of Adverse Effects of Cyber-Attacks on the DC Microgrid System

Cyber-attacks have adverse impacts on DC microgrid systems. Existing literature shows plenty of attack detection methods but lacks appropriate mitigation and prevention approaches for cyber-attacks in DC microgrids. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a novel solution based on a nonlinear controller to mitigate the adverse effects of various cyber-attacks, such as distributed denial of service attacks and false data injection attacks, on various components of a DC microgrid system consisting of a photovoltaic power source, a permanent magnet synchronous generator-based variable speed wind generator, a fuel cell, battery energy storage, and loads. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution, single and repetitive cyber-attacks on specific components of the microgrid have been considered. An index-based quantitative improvement analysis for the proposed control method has been made. Extensive simulations have been performed by the MATLAB/Simulink V9 software. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed nonlinear controller-based method in mitigating the adverse effects of cyber-attacks. Moreover, the performance of the proposed method is better than that of the proportional-integral controller. Due to the simplicity of the proposed solution, it can easily be implemented in real practice.