New Optimization and Security Approaches to
Enhance the Smart Grid Performance and Reliability
Mohamed Attia, Sidi Mohammed Senouci and El-Hassane Aglzim
DRIVE EA1859, Univ. Bourgogne Franche Comté, F58000, Nevers France
Contact authors:{mohamed.attia,, Sidi-Mohammed.Senouci, el-hassane.aglzim }@u-bourgogne.fr
Abstract—Nowadays, the Smart Grid (SG) is becoming smarter
thanks to the integration of different information and
communication technologies to enhance the reliability and
efficiency of the power grid. However, several issues should be met
to ensure high SG performance. Among these issues, we cite the
problem of electric vehicles (EVs) integration into the SG to avoid
electricity intermittence due to the important load that EVs can
create. Another issue is the SG communication network security
that can be attempted by malicious intruders in order to create
damages and make the power grid instable. In this context, we
propose at a first level a Bayesian game-theory model that aims to
integrate optimally EVs into the SG and maintain the equilibrium
between the offer and the demand. At a second level, we propose
an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to protect the SG from
attacks that aim to disturb the state estimation. Numerical results
prove the efficiency and robustness of our proposed models.
Keywords—Smart Grid, Game Theory, Bayesian Nash
Equilibrium, Electric Vehicles, Intrusion Detection System.
I. INTRODUCTION
The smart grid, known as next-generation power system, has
the ambition to greatly enhance efficiency and reliability of
future power systems with renewable energy resources. The
emergence of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the power grid has
created a fear of falling into the electricity intermittence due to
the huge number of vehicles, which can be deployed in the grid.
Furthermore, others consider this integration as a favor; thanks
to the capacity of EVs to store the electricity in their batteries. In
this paper, we propose a Bayesian game model for the
integration of EVs into the SG, where several parameters and
criteria are taken into account such as satisfaction, pollution rate,
cost and electricity selling price.
As far as the smart grid has more features, as more it will be
vulnerable to several lethal attacks. As mentioned in [1] and [2],
availability, integrity and confidentiality are the main security
objectives in the smart grid. In this paper, we are dealing with
the attacks targeting the integrity issue in the smart grid since
they can cause great damages, perturbations and losses. We
propose a rule-based detection algorithm to detect this kind of
attacks with a focus on blackhole attack, which consists in
dropping messages exchanged between nodes. We accord also
importance to the time delay attack, which is characterized by
adding delays before sending packets.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: the
proposed game model as well as the attack model and its
countermeasures are defined in Sections II and III, respectively.
Simulation results are discussed in Section IV. Finally, we
conclude this paper in Section V.
978-1-5090-4671-3/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
II. PROPOSED GAME MODEL TO OPTIMALLY INTEGRATE EVS
INTO THE SG
In this section, we define the proposed theoretic game model
to integrate EVs into the SG. We provide the payoff matrix of
the game related to our two players, which are: the SG as
electricity supplier and the EV as consumer.
A. Game formulation
In our approach, we consider two players: the SG and the
EV. Each player chooses to perform a specific action (i.e.
strategy) in order to maximize its payoff [3]. We note that, in
game theory concept, players are rational and want to maximize
their own payoff [4][5]. JSG and JEV denote the SG and the EV
players, respectively. The SG can perform one of these two pure
strategies: deliver the electricity or not deliver. the EV can
choose one of these two pure strategies: charge or not charge. In
this game, we divide time into regular intervals called time-slots;
each one of them represents a stage. However, at each stage there
is an interaction between the SG and an EV. Therefore, with the
help of Bayesian game concept, we model the different strategies
that could occur between an EV and the SG. The future state
prediction for the behavior of each one is determined thanks to
the Bayesian Nash Equilibrium (BNE). In the following, we
present the payoff matrix of the game between the SG and the
EV (see Table 1), where some notations are defined as follows:
1. X(t): amount of requested electricity at the time t.
2. P(t): price of electricity at the time t.
3. C(t): electricity production cost at the time t.
4. GSSG1(t): satisfaction gain for the SG at time t.
5. GSEV1(t): satisfaction gain for the EV at time t.
6. BL(t): battery level into the EV at time t.
7. LE(t): amount of not used electricity at time t.
The payoff equation of each player is as follows:
• X11 = X(t).(P(t) – C(t)) + GSSG1(t)
• Y11 = BL(t) – P(t).X(t) + GSEV1 (t)
• X12 = - (LE(t).C(t) + GSSG2(t))
• Y12 = BL(t)
• X21 = 0
• Y21 = BL(t) – GSEV2 (t)
• X22 = 0
• Y22 = BL(t)
Where:
• GSSG1(t) =

• GSEV1 (t)=
• GSSG2(t) = 1 – GSSG1(t)
• GSEV2 (t)= 1 – GSEV1 (t)
The payoff equations are selected according to the gain or
loss that the player can have in each case like financial gain,
purchased electricity cost, satisfaction/dissatisfaction rate, etc.
• PAYOFF MATRIX BETWEEN THE SMART GRID AND THE
ELECTRIC VEHICLE
B. Equilibrium determination
The utility of Bayesian Nash Equilibrium (BNE) is to
predict the future behavior of the SG and the EV, and determine
the permanent state, i.e. each player has an interest in
performing the same action [6]. According to Nash, there is a
mixed strategy BNE {player1 (action1, p*), player2 (action2,
q*)} in which both players do not change their actions. As a
result, we use the BNE concept to predict the stage when the
SG and the EV do not change their strategies, which are deliver
and charge, respectively.
Theorem
There is a mixed strategy BNE {JSG (deliver, p1*), JEV (charge,
q1*)} in which the SG chooses deliver action when the
probability p1 > p1* and the EV chooses charge action when q1 >
q1* where p1* = with 0< p1*≤ 1 and
.
. 9://
q1*= with 0< q1*≤ 1
. .
III. ATTACKS MODEL AND PROPOSED COUNTERMEASURES
This section contains a description of the attacks model then
the countermeasures to deal with blackhole and time delay
attacks.
A. Attack model
In our work, we focus specifically on attacks that have as
goal the state estimation and aims to perturb or even break down
the utility system. There is a multitude of attacks that can lead to
this goal, for example, blackhole attack [7] which consists in
dropping messages sent or received from one node to another
(i.e. delete them or do not send them). This attack is
characterized by the fluctuation of the number of sent packets
[7]. Therefore, this number of sent packets will no longer follow
a normal distribution like in the case of natural situation.
Another attack will be envisaged, the time delay attack [8],
where the attacker makes some delays to sent packets and so, the
Jitter (i.e. the delay between exchanged packets) will deviate
from normal distribution. To detect the blackhole and time delay
attacks, we monitor respectively the Number of Sent Packets
(NSP) and Jitter (i.e. the delay between the packets). Here, the
NSP and Jitter are monitored temporally over time and spatially
compared to the neighborhood nodes.
B. Temporal and spatial based detection
Our proposed model is based on rule-based approach to take
advantages from its benefits namely the low complexity
requirements with the least false positive rate compared to the
anomaly based detection algorithm [6]. Moreover, we added
some features to enhance the accuracy of our model in order to
be as near as possible to the learning algorithm's performance
namely in terms of detection rate. We note by l
x T , x T , x T , … x T the node i's vector where k
represents the number of Time slots T. x(T) denotes either the
NSP or the Jitter. In normal situation, each node follows normal
distribution characterized by the couple (μ1(i),σ1(i)) where μ1(i)
is the mean vector of the node i and σ1(i) is the standard
deviation. μ1(i) and σ1(i) are calculated as follows:
∑ (1)
∑ (2)
1: IDS monitors the Features (F) NSP or/and JITTER of the
Node (i.e. smart meter, actuator, control center)
2:// Temporal detection:
3:Monitor F’ distribution of a over time
4:if _ [( _ -3* _ ) && ( _ +3* _ )]then
5:// is suspected as an attacker
6://Spatial detection:
7:Compares the NSP’ distribution of a with its
neighbors
8:if _ [( _ -3* _ ) && ( _ +3* _ )]then
is detected as a black hole/time delay attack that
target estimation energy
10://Response:
11: Send an Alert message (Attack’s id, NSP or/and JITTER,
and detection time) to Control Center
Algo. 1. Attack detection rules for blackhole and time delay attacks
IV. NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
In our simulation we use Matlab, the most used tool
especially since it has some toolbox associated to game theory
and attack detection.
A. Numerical results for the proposed game model to
optimally integrate EVs into the SG
In this simulation, we show the probability convergence of
our two players: the SG as electricity supplier and the EV as
consumer.
As indicated before, p1* represents the optimal probability of
the SG above which the latter chooses the electricity delivery
action; q1* represents the optimal probability of the EV above
which it decides to charge its battery as chosen action. As shown
in Fig. 1., the probability p1* converges to 0.51. This means that
the SG will not change its strategy when its probability is higher
than 0.51. For the EV, its probability q1* converge to 0.61, where
it will not change its strategy when its probability is up than this
value.
Fig. 1. Probability convergence
B. Numerical results for the proposed IDS model
In this section, we show the evaluation of our proposed
detection model, which is a combination between spatial-based
and temporal-based detections. We compare its performances
with a temporal-based detection, a spatial-based detection, and
one of the most popular learning algorithms SVM (Support
Vector Machines).
(a)
(b)
Fig. 2. Accuracy rate: (a) Detection Rate (b) False Positive Rate
We check the robustness of each algorithm in terms of
Detection Rate (DR) and False Positive Rate (FPR) defined as
follows:
• Detection Rate (DR): the ratio of correctly identified
malicious nodes over total number of attackers,
• False Positive Rate (FPR): the ratio of normal nodes that
are classified as malicious over total number of normal
nodes.
As illustrated in Fig. 2, in terms of detection rate, our
proposed model called hybrid detection model has a good
performance. This proposed algorithm is still robust with more
than 95% of DR when the malicious nodes do not exceed 25%.
Moreover, it has the lowest FPR (False Positive Rate) among all
the other algorithms. Furthermore, given that our algorithm is
based on rules, it requires less computation capacity and energy
consumption compared to anomaly based detection algorithms
like SVM which is more sophisticated but also computationally
and energetically expensive.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a Bayesian game models to
integrate optimally EVs into the SG. We proposed also a new
detection policy that aims to combine the advantages of spatial
and temporal-based detection techniques to detect the most
lethal attacks that aim to disturb the state estimation of the smart
grid with a high accuracy. Simulation results show the efficiency
and good performance of the proposed models.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is funded by the European Project ITEA FUSE-
IT (http://www.itea2-fuse-it.com/).
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