Abnormal Responses of Residential Smart Photovoltaic Inverters to Cyberattacks

Smart PV inverters will play a significant role in supporting the electric grid and mitigating the effect of high solar energy penetration. Since smart inverters provide communication capabilities with real-time grid control and monitoring, they could be vulnerable to cyberattacks. Understanding the responses of smart inverters to cyberattacks is essential for system operators and PV owners to protect the system from malicious attacks. In this work, we designed and demonstrated two intermittent cyberattacks on two smart PV inverters from different manufacturers to observe their responses in terms of real and reactive power output. The results show that different inverters have their unique response during and after the cyberattacks which need to be recovered using different methods.