Cybersecurity of Smart Inverters in the Smart Grid: A Survey

The penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) in smart grids significantly increases the number of field devices owned and controlled by consumers, aggregators, third parties, and utilities. As the interface between DER and power grids, DER inverters are becoming smarter with various grid-support functions and communication capabilities. Meanwhile, the cybersecurity risks of smart inverters are also on the rise due to the extensive utilization of information and communication technologies. The potential negative impacts of cyberattacks on smart inverters have attracted significant attention from scholars and organizations. To advance the research on smart inverter cybersecurity and provide insights into its technical achievements, barriers, and future directions, this article will give a comprehensive review of critical attacks and defense strategies for smart inverters and inverter-based systems like microgrids. We start this survey with an overview of the smart inverter introduction, including device- and grid-level architectures, grid-support functions, and communication protocols. We then review various cyberattacks and defense strategies in different categories and scenarios tailed with discussions including their feasibility and remaining gaps. Finally, we discuss the opportunities and challenges of emerging technologies that can secure smart inverters. We hope this survey can inspire efforts to close research gaps and develop more mature cybersecurity solutions for smart inverters in the smart grid.