A Survey of Cyber-Physical Power System Modeling Methods for Future Energy Systems

The grid of the future will have a higher penetration of grid edge devices that enable increased automation and grid edge intelligence. The current grid models do not account for these grid-edge devices, and the creation of cyber-physical models for the grid is essential to understand the impact of these devices. Although existing cyber-physical power system (CPPS) models have been developed using a wide variety of approaches, a comprehensive review of the validity of these approaches and their suitability for modeling the future grid has not been performed. In a CPPS, the physical layer usually consists of the power grid and protection devices, whereas the cyber layer consists of communication, computation, and control components. This paper provides a review on the existing approaches to model CPPS and to characterize the inter- and intra-actions for distributed autonomous systems. The CPPS models can then be used to perform various analyses, such as cyberattack analysis, threat analysis, and resilience analysis. A qualitative evaluation criteria for the various modeling paradigm is discussed to help researchers understand the trade-offs in choosing the right modeling method for their particular application.