Direct cyber-power interdependencies-based reliability evaluation of smart grids including wind/solar/diesel distributed generations and plug-in hybrid electrical vehicles

Smart grid is a so-called “cyber-power system” because the cyber systems (control/monitoring/protection, and communication networks) are integrated to power systems in it. The less effort has been devoted in literature to reliability evaluation based on direct cyber-power Interdependencies (DCPIs) in widespread presence of distributed generations (DGs) and charging load of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) as supply side uncertainties and demand side ones. The consideration of uncertainty regarding the PHEVs in addition to other uncertain aspects inside the DCPIs is one of the most important contributions of this paper. In addition, the sensitivity analysis of reliability versus the variation of failures in power and cyber elements is essentially analyzed. The introduced method is applied to two realistic case studies. The test results infer that the DCPI-based reliability evaluation of smart grids including DGs and PHEVs is achievable through use of the proposed method. Because of using the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS), it is possible to extend the proposed method by integration of future uncertain and stochastic subjects without any limit. Further, the test results illustrate that the communication failures as direct network-element interdependencies (DNEI) is more important than direct element-element interdependencies (DEEI). The numerical results also imply that the risk level due to DCPIs increases due to inappropriate cyber network configurations.