Large-Scale Control Security Testing based on an Extended Testbed

PI: Jia Di, University of Arkansas

One of the main goals of the SEEDS Advanced Testbed Project is to develop an extended testbed focusing on integrating virtual and physical assets along with virtual appliances, which will be used to emulate Wide Area Networks (WANs) to simulate inter-substation communications. The virtual assets to be developed for this extended testbed involve utilizing existing physical assets such as the OPAL-RT Real-Time simulator along with various server resources. Virtual protection relays will be developed using the real-time simulator along with virtual microgrid simulations.

These relays will be configured to communicate with physical assets using the IEC 61850, DNP3, and ModbusTCP protocols along with analog voltage and current outputs. Virtual WAN interfaces will be emulated using VMware Hypervisors and Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) files, which allow for the virtualization of routers and switches and enable the emulation of the complex networks found in industry today. Additionally, multiple virtual servers will be configured and connected to these virtual networks serving functions such as SCADA, Security, and real-time Monitoring. This extended testbed will provide inter-station level system integration testing capabilities, which are needed for testing many SEEDS research outcomes.