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DOE OSTI2025

Electric Grid Security (EGS) FY24 Annual Report

Sandia’s Electric Grid Security program advances a national vision of a secure, resilient, and affordable electric system for all users. Our achievements reflect a strategic approach combining technology development; modeling, simulation, and data analytics; and partnered demonstrations and outreach to further the adoption of advanced grid and storage technologies. Our FY24 efforts leverage the strengths of our partnerships—spanning Sandia’s core science and technology competencies as well as external technology leaders—to develop the solutions today which enable the grid of tomorrow. Key accomplishments in this report that support our strategy span our technical program areas and include: • The advancement of energy storage technologies, including creation of a national Long Duration Energy Storage Consortium; • Applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhanced grid operations and planning; • Development of solid-state power conversion technologies and a new medium-voltage research lab; • New technologies to assess wildfire vulnerabilities and mitigate potential impacts; • Advanced applications of new cybersecurity technologies with industry partners; • Contributions to understanding the impacts of electromagnetic pulses and geomagnetic disturbances on grid components; and • Digital twin development for hybrid microgrids with multiple generators, storage, and loads.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2026

FY25 Electric Grid Security Annual Report

Sandia’s Electric Grid Security program advances a national vision of energy dominance and accessibility, while applying our national security -emphasis on ensuring of a secure, resilient, and affordable electric system for all users. Our achievements reflect a strategic approach combining technology development; modeling, simulation, and data analytics; and partnered demonstrations and outreach to further the adoption of advanced grid and storage technologies. Our FY25 efforts leverage the strengths of our partnerships—spanning Sandia’s core science and technology competencies as well as external technology leaders—to develop the solutions today which enable the grid of tomorrow. Key accomplishments in this report that support our strategy span our technical program areas and include: • New open-source analytical tools for systems -level planning and optimization, including significant advances to the QuESt analytical environment; • Further advancement of artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhanced grid operations and planning as we rise to the challenge of new large loads; • Development of solid-state power conversion technologies and a new medium-voltage research lab; • New technologies to assess wildfire vulnerabilities and mitigate potential impacts; • Advanced applications of new cybersecurity technologies with industry partners; • Contributions to understanding the impacts of electromagnetic pulses and geomagnetic disturbances on grid components; and • Digital twin development for hybrid microgrids with multiple generators, storage, and loads. This report indicates key areas of research and engagement and summarizes the impact of Sandia’s contributions through notable accomplishments, journal publications, patents, and technical conferences and presentations. It is provided with the hope that readers discover ways we can further team to create our modern grid and apply the outcomes of our efforts. The bulk of work described herein is funded by several offices within the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE), including the Office of Electricity (OE); Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER); former offices such as the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), the Grid Deployment Office (GDO), the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), and other key programs at USDOE. As we continue to state in these annual reports, the contributors to our successes are too numerous to name here, though our team wishes to express our deep gratitude to the numerous program and project sponsors at the US Department of Energy, who often function equally as technical collaborators; our many partners in industry, academia, utilities, and other national labs; and fellow researchers and business partners at Sandia whose leadership and creativity have enabled the accomplishments described herein.

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DOE OSTI2023

Robust Adaptive Control for Large-scale Inverter-based Resources with Partial and Complete Loss of Inverters

This article proposes an approach to address the current and the aggregated active power control challenge for large-scale inverter-based resources subjected to partially or completely loss of inverters and grid voltage variations. To address this problem, a distributed active power mechanism is proposed which generates desired inverters current. Then an adaptive mechanism distributes the voltage control input automatically between inverters in response to the partial or complete loss of inverters. An L2-gain-based controller is designed for each inverter to track the desired current and rejects the grid voltage disturbance. Here, simulation results show a significant robust tracking for collective active power and current.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Assessing DER Network Cybersecurity Defences in a Power-Communication Co-Simulation Environment

Increasing penetrations of interoperable distributed energy resources (DER) in the electric power system are expanding the power system attack surface. Maloperation or malicious control of DER equipment can now cause substantial disturbances to grid operations. Fortunately, many options exist to defend and limit adversary impact on these newly-created DER communication networks, which typically traverse the public internet. However, implementing these security features will increase communication latency, thereby adversely impacting real-time DER grid support service effectiveness. In this work, a collection of software tools called SCEPTRE were used to create a co-simulation environment where SunSpec-compliant PV inverters were deployed as virtual machines and interconnected to simulated communication network equipment. Network segmentation, encryption, and moving target defence security features were deployed on the control network to evaluate their influence on cybersecurity metrics and power system performance. The results indicated that adding these security features did not impact DER-based grid control systems but improved the cybersecurity posture of the network when implemented appropriately.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Farm-level Interactions Study of a Novel Tri-port Soft-switching Medium-Voltage String Inverter (MVSI) based Large-scale PV-Plus-Storage Farms

A medium-voltage photovoltaic power conversion unit supported by battery based on a novel topology of soft switching solid state transformer is presented in this paper. It can reduce the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of PVS farm in an extended degree. However, its capability to provide grid-support services, such as frequency response, reactive power support, etc, have not been demonstrated. A series/parallel combination of these modules form a large 20 MVA solar farm. To validate them with reduced computation burden, a small-signal model of MVSI is firstly derived and validated in this paper. The model has been validated to match the full-switch model in both steady-state and dynamic conditions. Next, a farm-level simulation based on the proved small-signal model was implemented to demonstrate grid-support services. Real irradiation date from NREL is used to show the operational capabilities of the system. As a result, the overall farm is simulated based on MATLAB/Simulink domain to check the performance for various cases namely: power transfer from dc-ac side, reactive power support during grid voltage sag and utilization of battery during grid voltage disturbance or partial shading over PV panels.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Voltage and Current Response Characteristics of PMU Device by PCI Simulation

Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) are critical for the Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS), especially for real-time grid monitoring, disturbance location, and situation awareness. Once they are damaged, the stable operation of power system will be affected directly and greatly. As new electronic devices in power system, their immunity to electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events needs to be studied. In this paper, an effective impedance measurement scheme is proposed for port impedance measurement of PMU. A non-uniform transmission line model is established to eliminate the impact of fixture in the de-embedding process. Then circuit of pulse current generator is established to generate damping sinusoid and double exponential wave applied to the port. Finally, by using measured impedance as load of the generator, the voltage and current responses of different ports are calculated in the pulsed current injection (PCI) simulation. Results shows the characteristics of port impedance, voltage and current waveforms. The relation between port impedance and the waveforms is discussed.

Zhang, Liang↗
DOE OSTI2022

Immunity Study: Port Impedance Measurement of PMU and PCI testing under EMP

Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) are critical for the Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS), especially for real-time grid monitoring, disturbance location, and situation awareness. Once they are damaged, the stable operation of the power system will be affected directly and greatly. Therefore, it is urgent and necessary to study their immunity to electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events. In this paper, an effective impedance measurement scheme is proposed for port impedance measurement of PMU. The equivalent non-uniform transmission line model is established to eliminate the impact of the fixture in the de-embedding process. Then circuit of pulsed current generator is established to generate damping sinusoid and double exponential wave applied to the port. Finally, by using measured impedance as a load of the generator, the voltage and current responses of different ports are calculated in the pulsed current injection (PCI) testing simulation. Results show that common-mode impedance is large and differential mode impedance is small. The critical condition will appear in the common mode for voltage and differential mode for current.

Zhang, Liang↗
DOE OSTI2023

Immunity Study: Port Impedance Measurement of PMU and PCI testing under EMP

With the increased requirements of real-time grid monitoring, disturbance location, and situation awareness, Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) have become more critical for the Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS). However, the vulnerability of PMUs has not been well studied, especially under electromagnetic pulse (EMP) scenarios. The stable operation of the power system will be affected directly once EMP damages them. Therefore, studying their immunity to EMP events is urgent and necessary. In this paper, the effective impedance measurement scheme and pulsed current injection (PCI) testing are proposed for the port impedance measurement and immunity levels of PMUs. The equivalent non-uniform transmission line model is established to eliminate the impact of the fixture in the de-embedding process. Then, the circuit of the pulsed current generator is set to generate a damping sinusoid, and the double exponential wave is applied to the port. Finally, using measured impedance as a generator load, the voltage and current responses of different ports are calculated in the PCI testing simulation. In conclusion, results reveal the characteristics of port impedance, waveforms of voltage and current, and distribution of accumulative energy. The relation between port impedance and the waveforms is discussed.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Cybersecurity Workforce Training for SMR Integration into Distribution Grids: A Competency Framework and Containerized Hands-On Lab for the SMR/DER/Microgrid Boundary

Small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors are entering the U.S. distribution grid as synchronous generation on feeders designed for loads and inverter-based distributed energy resources (DERs). No existing cybersecurity training program addresses this intersection of nuclear operations, DER management, and operational technology security. As subcontractor to Iowa State University on the CyDERMS Center, Argonne analyzed the relevant standards and training landscape, translated the resulting gaps into a twelve-objective competency framework across distribution-operator and graduate-analyst role tracks, and built a containerized training lab using a ∼400-bus composite grid model behind a realistically simulated Modbus TCP SCADA stack. The analysis isolates the balance-of-plant / energy-management-system (BOP/EMS) boundary as the critical jurisdictional seam where, as of March 2026, neither NRC nor NERC CIP cleanly claims cybersecurity responsibility for distribution-connected SMRs. The framework maps each objective across NIST CSF 2.0, ISA/IEC 62443, NIST NICE Task–Knowledge–Skill statements, and NRC RG 5.71 awareness-and-training controls. The training lab implements operator-recognition assessment scenarios spanning grid-side disturbances and telemetry-layer anomalies.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Rapid Event Detection via Synchro-Waveform Based Temporal Attention Network in Distributed Grid

Compared with the information collected from phasor measurement units, synchro-waveforms contain high-fidelity disturbances of the grid, which can be a granular and authentic representation of measurements in the modern power system. However, the dynamic changing morphology makes it challenging to effectively capture various disturbance information from the synchro-waveforms. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes a Synchro-waveform based Temporal Attention (STA) network to achieve rapid event detection. First, a multi-scenario distributed model with renewable integration is established to generate synchro-waveforms under various uncertainties. Then, three typical temporal features are extracted directly from the synchro-waveform measurements. Additionally, the lightweight STA network is deployed to identify the most common event types in renewable energy systems via the self-attention based vision transformer module. The results from simulated experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach can achieve rapid and real-time detection within 0.81 ms and over 96.27 % accuracy.

Dong, Yuqing [University of Tennessee (UT)]↗
DOE OSTI2024

Cascading Transformer Failure Probability Model Under Geomagnetic Disturbances

This paper develops a probabilistic model to assess the cascading failure of transformers in an electric power grid experiencing geomagnetic disturbances caused by a solar storm. We propose a model in which the probability of failure is a function of the intensity of the solar storm, the physical properties of the transformer, the geographical location of the transformer, and the flow of electrical power. We demonstrate the proposed model using the IEEE 14-bus system and several notional solar storms. The model quickly computes the initial and cascading failure probabilities of the transformers in the system as a first step towards quantifying the risks posed by future solar storms.

Shukla, Pratishtha↗
DOE OSTI2026

Applications of Solid-State Transformers for Electric Power Grid HEMP/GMD Resilience

A high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) or geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) can disrupt power grids by inducing low-frequency common-mode (CM) currents. When these currents flow through grounded transformers, they can bias the magnetic core, driving it into saturation and reducing performance or damaging equipment. This work presents a solid-state transformer (SST) to replace vulnerable assets and improve grid resilience. The paper reviews half-cycle saturation in conventional transformers, then describes an SST architecture that neutralizes and redirects CM currents during HEMP/GMD events. A prototype SST is built and validated, demonstrating stable CM-disturbance operation and protection of nearby transformers. Finally, large-scale simulations show how coordinated SST deployment mitigates CM disturbances and strengthens overall grid resilience.

four-leg inverter↗
DOE OSTI2023

High Performance Adaptive Deep-Reinforcement-Learning-based Real-time Emergency Control (HADREC) to Enhance Power Grid Resilience in Stochastic Environment (Final Report)

The HADREC technology developed in this project features real-time, validated, and predictive emergency control capabilities needed to effectively safeguard the grid against costly disturbances from extreme weather and other disruptive events. It has the potential to revolutionize the emergency control by providing faster and more effective solution for power grid emergency control. The technology can reduce the grid emergency control action time from minutes to seconds and mitigate the impact of outages and reduce system recovery time. The evaluation results using the models and data from PacifiCorp system have shown ~20% improvement in responding time and 70% improved in tripped generator output, comparing against today’s industrial application. This performance can help reduce preventive measurements and improve network utilization and market efficiency, and help lead to a more reliable and resilient power grid with renewable integration. The project has generated significant interest from industry, academic and commercial companies.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Energy Resilient Recovery in Puerto Rico: Hurricane Maria Recovery Support

This report covers microgrids as a special application of distributed energy resources (DERs) in Puerto Rico. This is one of a series of reports describing the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) multi-laboratory efforts undertaken. To ensure the sustainable, long-term recovery of Puerto Rico's electric power grid from hurricanes Maria and Irma and to build capacity to manage future potential natural disasters in the most secure and resilient way, DOE convened experts from multiple national laboratories to develop a comprehensive set of data, models, analytic tools, and studies, considering inputs from a wide variety of stakeholder groups, to support technically sound recommendations for Puerto Rico's energy investment decisions. In Phase 1 of the multi-laboratory effort to support Puerto Rico's recovery, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) provided the utility company Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) recommendations for a new framework of interconnection standards to accelerate the integration of utility-scale, transmission-connected, renewable electrical generation and energy storage that ensure cross-technology compatibility and enable high deployment levels without compromising grid reliability, safety, or security (https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73848.pdf). In Phase 2, NREL published a report focused on the interconnection of distributed energy resources (DERs) to the electric distribution system in Puerto Rico (https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/77127.pdf). This report familiarized the reader with Puerto Rico's distribution infrastructure and operational practices and procedures that are relevant to DER interconnection. The report also provided considerations for streamlining the interconnection process given the expected increase in deployments resulting from Puerto Rico's renewable portfolio standard goal of 100% renewables by 2050. Accordingly, the report identifies considerations and concerns associated with the increase in intermittent generation, strategies for DER interconnection best practices, and the potential use of the latest technological solutions identified in the latest revision of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 1547-2018 interconnection standard. Additionally, the report identified ways to improve the physical resiliency of installed DERs. This task describes how distributed energy systems may participate in and contribute to improving the resiliency of Puerto Rico's energy infrastructure in the future. This report presents an analysis of the Puerto Rico grid to illustrate the possible different microgrid and minigrid scenarios. The capability to form sustained microgrids and minigrids has the potential to provide a high level of resiliency during disturbances on the grid. DERs, on the other hand, have the capability to aid in the microgrid operation by providing grid support as well as grid-forming functionality. Other tasks in Phase 3 include voltage regulation in distribution networks using DERs and transmission-and-distribution co-simulation.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗