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Contract Opportunity

TECHNOLOGY LICENSING OPPORTUNITY

Master State Awareness Estimator for Cybersecurity in a Distribution Grid

A synchrophasors-based master state awareness estimator to enhance the cybersecurity in distribution grid by providing a real-time estimation of system operating states.

Opportunity: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), managed and operated by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (BEA), is offering the opportunity to enter into a license and/or collaborative research agreement to commercialize the Master State Awareness Estimator. This technology transfer opportunity is part of a dedicated effort to convert government-funded research into job opportunities, businesses and ultimately an improved way of life for the American people.

Overview: State estimation (SE) is one of the crucial energy management system (EMS) applications that provides an accurate estimation of network topology and also supports existing control center applications, such as contingency analysis, optimal load dispatch, dynamic security analysis, and other real-time applications. Existing state estimation methods for transmission grid are generally based on a balanced three-phase system. However, the next generation distribution grid is more complex and sophisticated with a higher interconnection of intermittent distributed energy resources (DER) and unbalanced load fluctuations. Therefore, it is imperative to develop substation-level local state estimation by exploring new opportunities using phasor measurement units (PMUs) that can replace the existing supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)-based state estimation.

Description: The integration of DERs and expansion of complex network in the distribution grid requires an advanced two-level state estimator to monitor the grid health at micro-level. The Master State Awareness Estimator will improve the situational awareness and resiliency of distributed power systems. It provides a real-time estimation of system operating states to control center operators. It uses only phasor measurements, bus magnitudes and angles, deployed in local substations to estimate the system states and also detects data integrity attacks.

Benefits:

• Uses distributed, low footprint, hardware for on-site capture and analysis without requiring a centralized heavy-duty server.


• Scalable


• Uses a general-purpose machine learning algorithm for identification of system anomalies, which reduces the need for specialized code for dissecting specific protocols.


• Can be installed without requiring modifications to the network


• Does not cause any interference in the system


• Does not require any background monitoring software to be installed.

Applications:

• Cybersecurity for detecting anomalous communication, with capabilities to perform automated data analysis on-site and tactical information to inform root cause analysis to operators.

Development Status: TRL 4. Proof-of-concept prototype is undergoing testing and validation.

IP Status: Provisional Patent Application No. 63/350,724, “Systems and Methods for State-Estimation Based Anomaly Detection,” BEA Docket No. BA-1272

INL is seeking to license the above intellectual property to a company with a demonstrated ability to bring such inventions to the market. Exclusive rights in defined fields of use may be available. Added value is placed on relationships with small businesses, start-up companies, and general entrepreneurship opportunities.

Please visit Technology Deployment’s website at https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment for more information on working with INL and the industrial partnering and technology transfer process.

Companies interested in learning more about this licensing opportunity should contact Andrew Rankin at td@inl.gov.

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