Load-Altering Attacks Against Power Grids under COVID-19 Low-Inertia Conditions

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our society by forcing shutdowns and shifting the way people interacted worldwide. In relation to the impacts on the electric grid, it created a significant decrease in energy demands across the globe. Recent studies have shown that the low demand conditions caused by COVID-19 lockdowns combined with large renewable generation have resulted in extremely low-inertia grid conditions. In this work, we examine how an attacker could exploit these scenarios to cause unsafe grid operating conditions by executing load-altering attacks (LAAs) targeted at compromising hundreds of thousands of IoT-connected high-wattage loads in low-inertia power systems. Our study focuses on analyzing the impact of the COVID-19 mitigation measures on U.S. regional transmission operators (RTOs), formulating a plausible and realistic least-effort LAA targeted at transmission systems with low-inertia conditions, and evaluating the probability of these large-scale LAAs. Theoretical and simulation results are presented based on the WSCC 9-bus and IEEE 118-bus test systems. Results demonstrate how adversaries could provoke major frequency disturbances by targeting vulnerable load buses in low-inertia systems and offer insights into how the temporal fluctuations of renewable energy sources, considering generation scheduling, impact the grid’s vulnerability to LAAs. Author

Supply Chain Resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of Resilient Supply Chains across all industries, as companies are struggling to overcome the severe disruptions caused by the pandemic. The present study utilizes the Dynamic Capabilities View (DCV) framework, aiming to examine the main factors that contribute to the development of robust supply chains. This empirical research answers the call for further investigation about the key elements that constitute a durable supply chain, on the one hand, and the lessons learned during the global covid-19 crisis, on the other. The study proposes a conceptual framework that includes five factors: (a) three factors related to supply chain management in rapidly changing environments, (b) top management commitment and (c) firm performance. The examination of the proposed conceptual framework was conducted using a newly developed structured questionnaire that was distributed to a sample of manufacturing organizations. CEOs and supply chain managers were selected as key respondents, due to their knowledge and expertise. More specifically, research hypotheses were tested via Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) techniques. Results underline the impact of supply chain dynamic capabilities, such as agility, ambidexterity and resilience on firm performance. © 2021 IEEE.