Abstract
A solution methodology and implementation components are presented that can uncover unwanted, unintentional or unanticipated effects on electric grids from changes to actual electric grid control software. A new design is presented to leapfrog over the limitations of current modeling and testing techniques for cyber technologies in electric grids. We design a fully virtualized approach in which actual, unmodified operational software under test is enabled to interact with simulated surrogates of electric grids. It enables the software to influence the (simulated) grid operation and vice versa in a controlled, high fidelity environment. Challenges in achieving such capability include achieving low-overhead time control mechanisms in hypervisor schedulers, network capture and time-stamping, translation of network packets emanating from grid software into discrete events of virtual grid models, translation back from virtual sensors/actuators into data packets to control software, and transplanting the entire system onto an accurately and efficiently maintained virtual-time plane.
[Pub 144]
Kalyan Perumalla
As a Federal Program Manager in Advanced Scientific Computing Research at the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Science, Kalyan Perumalla manages a $100-million R&D portfolio covering AI, HPC, Quantum, SciDAC, and Basic Computer Science. In his 25-year R&D leadership experience, he previously led advanced R&D as Distinguished Research Staff Member at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) developing scalable software and applications on the world’s largest supercomputers for 17 years, including as a line manager and a founding group leader. He has held senior faculty and adjunct appointments at UTK, GT, and UNL, and was an IAS Fellow at Durham University.