Background
Microgrids are becoming a cornerstone of power distributions systems that will facilitate the realization of a carbon-neutral electric power systems. Alongside their flexibility to be operated in both grid-connected and autonomous modes, they also provide natural interfaces with many types of RES and ESSs and good compliance with consumer electronics. Moreover, microgrids can be grid-interactive by providing grid supportive functions such as frequency response and, regulation, reactive power support and voltage regulation, etc.

Motivation
These concerns lead to more and more deployment of microgrids in transmission and distribution levels. Furthermore, with proliferation of communication technologies, microgrids are evolving into cyber-physical systems (CPS) that use sophisticated software-based networked control. This increased sophistication imposes numerous new challenges involving coordination, operation philosophy and vulnerability to cyber-attacks. Cyber-attacks can be designed in many ways: (a) sensor infiltration, (b) communication infringement. Even though several hard-bound secure protocols are designed to ensure the authenticity of the actual signal, the attackers usually target the control layer as an easy target. Hence, this course aims to focus on: (a) identifying the vulnerable access points in microgrid controllers, (b) introducing the most prominent cyber-attacks, (c) detection of cyber-attacks in real-time, (d) removal of these attack elements and ensuring stability/preventing system shutdown, (e) various stability issues in microgrids due to cyber-attacks, (f) design of cyber-attack resilient controllers for microgrids, which heals by itself despite any cyber intrusion attempts. Experimental lab demonstration is expected as well along with discussion on future research ideas.

MSc in Power Electronics and Drives, Electric Power Systems, Mechatronics, Wind Power Systems, Wireless Communications

1. a basic understanding of cyber-physical vulnerabilities and their evolution in the recent past
2. defense mechanisms to protect industrial control systems (ICS) and hardware against illegitimate threats
3. non-invasive probing techniques to understand the impact of such threats in ICS and various power electronic applications, such as solar farm, EVs, data centers.

• Cybersecurity
• Power Electronics
• Microgrids
• Information Theory
• Control Theory
• Signal Processing

Please register here at the website of The Doctoral School in Engineering and Science here.

Please observe that it is impossible to register for PhD courses until 4 months before start.

Outside of AAU
If you are from outside Aalborg University and you wish to enroll in one of our PhD courses, you must create a profile. This is done by clicking on “create new account” and filling out the form in PhD Moodle.

Cancellation
Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before the start of the course. The Doctoral School has a no-show fee of DKK 3.000 for each course where the student does not show up.

Registered illness sent to the course organizer and the aauphd@aau.dk is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days.

Diploma
All passed participants will receive a diploma as a PDF file.
The Doctoral School kindly ask for your patience, as it might take a while before you receive the final course diploma. This is due to the process of gathering evaluations.

Please address questions regarding the evaluation or issue of the diploma to the Doctoral School, via email at phdcourses@adm.aau.dk

More information: www.energy.aau.dk/research/phd   

The course counts for 1,5 ECTS credit. All students will receive a diploma stating participation in the course.

Remarks - workload: In total around 38 hours (15 hours teaching, 3 hours for practicing, 3 hours for preparation, 15 hours for finalizing a student report - 3 exercises in a team (max 4 members), 2 hours for exam

6000 DKK for PhD students outside of Denmark and 8000 DKK for other participants (Private, Industry and Universities) VAT-FREE Education)

PhD Student from Danish universities: The Danish universities have entered into an agreement that allows PhD students at a Danish university (except Copenhagen Business School) the opportunity to free of charge take a subject-specific course at another Danish university. Read more here: https://phdcourses.dk/ 

Guests at AAU Energy: Enrolled Guest PhD Students at AAU Energy can attend free of charge on the course if  available seats.

Books:

• S. Sahoo, F. Blaabjerg and T. Dragicevic, “Cybersecurity for Microgrids”, IET, 2022.

Papers:

• K. Gupta, S. Sahoo and B. K. Panigrahi, "A Monolithic Cybersecurity Architecture for Power Electronic Systems," in IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 4217-4227, July 2024.
  K. Gupta, S. Sahoo and B. K. Panigrahi, "Delay-Aware Semantic Sampling in Power Electronic Systems," IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 4038-4049, July 2024.
• V S Bharath Kurukuru, M Khan and S Sahoo, “Cybersecurity in Power Electronics using Minimal Data – A Physics-Informed Spline Learning Approach,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 37, no. 11, pp. 12938- 12943, 2022.
• M Leng, S Sahoo, F Blaabjerg, M Molinas, “Projections of Cyber Attacks on Stability of DC Microgrids - Modeling Principles and Solution,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 37, no. 10, pp. 11774-11786, 2022.
• A. Cecilia, S. Sahoo, T. Dragicevic, R. Costa, F. Blaabjerg, On Addressing the Security and Stability Issues Due to False Data Injection Attacks in DC Microgrids – An Adaptive Observer Approach,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 2801-2814, 2021.
• K. Gupta, S. Sahoo, B. K. Panigrahi, F. Blaabjerg, P. Popovski, “On the Assessment of Cyber Risks and Attack Surfaces in a Real-Time Co-Simulation Cybersecurity Testbed for InverterBased Microgrids,” Energies, vol. 14, no. 16, 4941, 2021.
• S Sahoo, T Dragicevic and F Blaabjerg, “Multi Layer Resilience Paradigm Against Cyber Attacks in DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 2522-2532, 2020.
• S Sahoo, Y Yang and F Blaabjerg, ”Resilient Synchronization Strategy for AC Microgrids Under Cyber Attacks”, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 73-77, 2020.
• S Sahoo, T Dragicevic and F Blaabjerg, “An Event-Driven Resilient Control Strategy for DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 35, no. 12, pp. 13714-13725, 2020.
• S Sahoo, T Dragicevic and F Blaabjerg, “Resilient Operation of Heterogeneous Sources in Cooperative DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 35, no. 12, pp. 12601-12605, 2020.
• S Sahoo, J Peng, S Mishra and T Dragicevic, “Distributed Screening of Hijacking Attacks in DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 35, no. 7, pp. 7574-7582, 2019.
• S. Sahoo, S Mishra, J Peng and T Dragicevic, “A Stealth Cyber Attack Detection Strategy for DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 34, no. 8, pp. 8162-8174, 2018.

The participants will be grouped into teams based on several case studies, data (from our labs) and tasks proposed along the course. Based on the data and lectures, a design challenge (3 exercises) will be conducted to assess the efficacy and robustness of the security design by each team. This will be the terms of assessment for each team in combination with delivery of lab exercise reports.

Criteria for assessment: Efficacy, robustness and simplicity (computational burden, resources) of the security design by each team

Course Coordinator: Subham Sahoo, sssa@energy.aau.dk

Course Administrator: Louise Levisen, lmle@energy.aau.dk

AAU's Doctoral School, phdcourses@adm.aau.dk