Impact assessment and mitigation of the effect of cyber-physical attacks on the electric vehicles high-power fast charging stations considering open charge point protocol

Abstract

Electric Vehicles are on the rise worldwide, and the increasing demand also increases the need for High Power Fast Charging Stations. The deployment of such charging stations dictates the establishment of information and communication infrastructure that uses communication protocols. Such an infrastructure makes these charging stations prone to cyber-physical attacks. This thesis focuses on the impact assessment and mitigation of these cyber-physical attacks on the operation of the existing assets and the voltage quality. Additionally, the thesis displays the weakness in the communication protocol between the electric vehicles and the charging stations that intruders can exploit to gain unauthorized access to pose threats to the microgrid. A microgrid embedded with the vehicle-to-grid operation and renewable energy sources is simulated in MATLAB SIMSCAPE and used to demonstrate such cyber-physical attacks' impacts on the transformer. Finally, the results showed a significant transformer overload impacting the overall system and costing millions in damages.