PHOENIX Project will ensure the Smart EV Charging Management System (SCMS) is resilient to Cyber-Attacks

The transition to electric mobility is giving rise to new threats and new opportunities for the electricity grid, in this regard smart charging management system (SCMS) have been developed with the aim of creating significant benefits by coordinating the charging of electric vehicles with the management systems of the power grid; however, if not properly protected, this collaboration can create various problems due to cyber-attacks.

The smart charging management system (SCMS) optimizes the charging of electric vehicles by providing advantageous services for the grid management system (GMS).

The main services offered by SCMS are:

• Peak shaving: shifting electric vehicles power consumption away from power peak hours;
• Frequency regulation: coordinate electric vehicles charging to maintain the balance between generation and consumption and ensure the stability of the frequency value;
• Renewable energy integration: support renewable energy integration into the electricity grid charging electric vehicles with energy surplus produced by renewable plants to avoid reverse power flow, which leads to grid instability. The main mechanism used to offer this type of service is Demand Response (DR);
• Reactive power compensation: since the power factor of electric vehicles is 0.99, it is possible to compensate for the reactive power injected into the grid by charging electric vehicles.

The aforementioned services are enabled by real-time monitoring and remote management of devices that are continuously connected to the internet; this exposes to dangerous cyber-attacks the SCMS and the infrastructure with which it collaborates, such as building energy management systems, grid management systems, billing systems, utility control centers.

Some of the main potential cyber-attacks in SCMS context are:

• False data injection attack, causing miscoordination between SCMS and GMS;
• Man-in-the-Middle attack, causing a possible overload of the transformers and disturbance of power grid frequency with consequent power grid failure via rapid cycling of a large number of EVs;
• Denial-of-Service attack, causing SCMS to be unable to provide services to GMS;
• Malware injection via charging station computers, causing theft of several sensitive information such as payment information, personal information, charging time, payment amounts, etc., affecting the trust of the stakeholders involved in the cooperation between SCMS and GMS.

In the PHOENIX project, the above scenario will be investigated in Italian pilot with the aim of providing a safe solution to ensure stable cooperation between e-Mobility and EPES (European Power Energy Systems – SMART GRID).