Abstract
Maintaining the stability, reliability, and most importantly, the cyber-security of the
power grid is becoming more complicated as the demands placed on the power system grows
steadily as do cyber threats. As the demand placed on power system increases, a modern
power system is more likely to operate near its secure limit. Due to the cost implications of
building more plants and transmission lines to make the power system robust, the already
installed infrastructure is usually operated closer to its secure operating limits. Deployment
of Remedial Action Schemes (RAS) is a viable economical alternative to maintain operational
security when the construction of new infrastructure is not desirable. It is also important
to ensure that the deployed RAS scheme is protected from cyber-attacks intended to make
it mis-operate, whereby it would make the power grid even more vulnerable to cascading
failure.
In this thesis, two RAS schemes were designed, modelled and deployed to improve the
resilience, reliability and stability of the power system. The first RAS scheme is designed to
improve the transient stability index of the system when critical events capable of driving
the system to cascading failure occur. The second RAS scheme is designed to be immune to
data measurement cyber threats. The second RAS scheme should operate correctly even in
the presence of false data in the power grid. Both RAS models were deployed and tested on
the WECC 179 bus test system.