A Cyber-Resilient Secondary Frequency Control Framework for Virtual-Synchronous-Generator-Controlled Microgrids With Grid-Forming Inverter-Based Resources

This article proposes a resilient framework for secondary frequency control that incorporates ancillary dynamics in the cyber layer, which is interconnected with the physical layer of the microgrids controlled by virtual synchronous generators (VSGs) and utilizing grid-forming (GFM) inverter-based resources (IBRs). The proposed frequency control approach enhances microgrid resilience in both transient and steady-state responses against false data injection (FDI) attacks targeting secondary control inputs of GFM IBRs’ control units and computational nodes. Beyond cybersecurity strategies that focus solely on cyberattack detection mechanisms, the proposed control approach can effectively mitigate the impact of attacks without relying on any detection and unit isolation approaches. By virtue of a Lur’e dynamic system representation, an input–output stability analysis is carried out in the presence of FDI attacks to ensure operation within safety constraints in VSG-controlled microgrids. Moreover, a rigorous system-theoretic optimization-based framework analyzes the resilience of the proposed control framework in the presence of attacks while considering the operational frequency constraints of microgrids. Finally, MATLAB simulations and testing based on power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) simulations validate the effectiveness and efficacy of the proposed control framework’s performance.