RT20 | PNNL Cyber-physical research laboratory overview and co-simulation case study of a Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) microgrid for cybersecurity experimentation

​When experimenting with cybersecurity technologies for industrial control systems, it is often difficult to develop a realistic, self-contained model that provides an ability to easily measure the effects of cyber behavior on the associated physical system. In this talk, I will provide an overview of PNNL’s Cyber-physical research laboratory and outline some of its key capabilities. I will then talk about how we created and instantiated a microgrid cyber-physical model, where both the power distribution and the individual loads are under the control and authority of one entity. Such a setup enables cybersecurity experimentation where attacks against the physical system (grid and buildings) could be observed and defended from a single entity’s infrastructure. I will describe how our microgrid cyber-physical model achieved appropriate levels of fidelity for cybersecurity effects by integrating multiple levels of simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and virtualization. Finally, I will also present how we instantiated and validated this test case model in our testbed infrastructure along with an exemplary multistage attack scenario to showcase the model's utility.