Smart devices on the electric grid increase vulnerability to hacking, threatening power outages and system damage. A team from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory proposes a new tool to prioritize and manage cyber threats more effectively, aiming to protect the grid by addressing both immediate and future challenges.There’s a down side to “smart” devices: They can be hacked.
At the recent annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Vancouver, Canada, a team of experts at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory put forth a new approach to protect the grid. “It’s important to deal with today’s problems, but let’s also think about tomorrow’s challenges. We need to plan for things down the line as more smart devices like batteries, inverters, generators, and hybrid cars are connected to the grid,” Purohit added.
The project is one of hundreds of efforts at PNNL to improve artificial intelligence or apply it to address the nation’s greatest challenges. The research led by Purohit is an example of work on energy resilience, an important mission area of the Center for AI @ PNNL. There are thousands of ways to attack utility operations. By looking at historical events and using reinforcement learning, we have reduced that to fewer than 100 that need the most attention.”
“If your favorite movies aren’t recommended by a streaming service, and you don’t understand why, that’s inconvenient but not a real problem,” said Purohit. “But grid operators must keep the power on, and they need to understand the reasoning behind every action they might take.”