University of Minnesota to support federally funded cybersecurity center

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) recently awarded a combined $15 million to six universities for the establishment of cybersecurity centers to secure the nation’s energy infrastructure and develop a skilled workforce to address cyber threats facing the energy sector. The universities were selected by the DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER). One of the centers, named Center for Cybersecurity and Resiliency of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and Microgrids-integrated Distribution Systems (CyDERMS) will focus on improving the security and resilience of the distribution grid including real-time cyber situational awareness for distribution management systems. The University of Minnesota will support the mission of CyDERMS which will be led by Iowa State University (ISU). Other supporting institutions are University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and Michigan Technological University (MTU). ISU will receive $2.5 million for the two-year project which will focus on improving the security and resilience of the distribution grid including real-time cyber situational awareness for distribution management systems.

Emphasizing the significance of the project, ECE faculty and Vincentine Hermes-Luh Chair Murti Salapaka who will be collaborating with scientists from ISU, UIUC, and MTU says, “With large penetration of renewables it is becoming increasingly important to obtain situational awareness of how the power network is structured and how it changes over time with high bandwidth.”

In its role, the University will focus on obtaining the power network topology from data, estimate the state of the network and leverage resulting inferences  toward securing the power network with a high concentration of distributed energy resources. 

Speaking about the tools and approaches, Murti says, “[The University] will employ fast  data driven approaches which will be combined with more traditional approaches toward cyber security of the grid. We will also develop secure distributed strategies for aggregating power of multiple smaller capacity distributed energy resources (DER) that behave as a virtual late power source that can provide ancillary services to the grid.”

In addition to supporting institutions UMN, UIUC, and MTU, the goals of the project will be accomplished through a partnership that will include two DOE national laboratories – Argonne National Lab (ANL) and National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), energy system vendor GE Research, and regional utilities.  

Besides Iowa State University, the other recipients of the combined grant are the University of Connecticut, University of Pittsburgh, Illinois Institute of Technology, Texas Tech University, and Florida International University. 

Iowa State University to lead cybersecurity center

DOE supports six university-based cybersecurity centers

The feature image at the top is courtesy Foundry Co. on Pixabay