A major transformation is taking place throughout the electric power industry to overlay existing electric infrastructure with advanced sensing, communications, and control system technologies. This transformation to a smart grid promises to enhance system efficiency, increase system reliability, support the electrification of transportation, and provide customers with greater control over their electricity consumption. Upgrading control and communication systems for the end-to-end electric power grid, however, will present many new security challenges that must be dealt with before extensive deployment and implementation of these technologies can begin.

In this dissertation, a comprehensive systems approach is taken to minimize and prevent cyber-physical disturbances to electric power distribution systems using sensing, communications, and control system technologies. To accomplish this task, an intelligent distributed secure control (IDSC) architecture is presented and validated in silico for distribution systems to provide greater adaptive protection, with the ability to proactively reconfigure, and rapidly respond to disturbances. Detailed descriptions of functionalities at each layer of the architecture as well as the whole system are provided.

To compare the performance of the IDSC architecture with that of other control architectures, an original simulation methodology is developed. The simulation model integrates aspects of cyber-physical security, dynamic price and demand response, sensing, communications, intermittent distributed energy resources (DERs), and dynamic optimization and reconfiguration. Applying this comprehensive systems approach, performance results for the IEEE 123 node test feeder are simulated and analyzed. The results show the trade-offs between system reliability, operational constraints, and costs for several control architectures and optimization algorithms. Additional simulation results are also provided. In particular, the advantages of an IDSC architecture are highlighted when an intermittent DER is present on the system.