IEC 62351-12: Resilience and security recommendations for power systems with DER systems

IEC TC 57 has published an important 100+ pages document that cares about the resilience and recovery of power system build on a high penetration of DER systems.

IEC 62351-12 TR (57/1637/DTR):
Power systems management and associated information exchange –
Data and communications security –
Part 12: Resilience and security recommendations for power systems with Distributed Energy Resources (DER) cyber-physical systems

Voting closes 2015-12-25

“ … This document discusses cyber security recommendations and engineering/operational strategies for improving the resilience of power systems with interconnected Distributed Energy Resources (DER) systems. It covers the resilience requirements for the many different stakeholders of these dispersed cyber-physical generation and storage devices, with the goal of enhancing the safety, reliability, power quality, and other operational aspects of power systems, particularly those with high penetrations of DER systems.

In the energy sector, two key phrases are becoming the focus of international and national policies: “grid resilience” and “cyber security of the cyber-physical grid”. Grid resilience responds to the overarching concern: "The critical infrastructure, the Smart Electric Grid, must be resilient - to be protected against both physical and cyber problems when possible, but also to cope with and recover from the inevitable disruptive event, no matter what the cause of that problem is - cyber, physical, malicious, or inadvertent."
“Grid resilience … includes hardening, advanced capabilities, and recovery/reconstitution. Although most attention is placed on best practices for hardening, resilience strategies must also consideroptions to improve grid flexibility and control.” Resilience of the grid is often associated with making the grid able to withstand and recover from severe weather and other physical events, but resilience should also include the ability of the cyber-physical grid to withstand and recover from malicious and inadvertent cyber events. ...”

Two of the most crucial challenges of the future of our power systems (electric, gas, and heat) are the understanding of (1) the power system AND (2) the automation and communication infrastructure. This requires solid and comprehensive education of the engineers – junior and senior. Unfortunately a lot of engineers show a lag in understanding new and existing technologies.

The good news is that – at least in the electric world – we have globally a single standard (IEC 61850) that meets almost all needs and that is accepted and used all over!