 "Photo:")
University of Illinois researchers will work with electricity companies over the next five years on new hardware and software to improve the reliability of the nation's vulnerable power grid and make it secure from attack by computer hackers or terrorists.
The new project, backed by a $7.5 million National Science Foundation grant, arrives two years after the largest blackout in U.S. history left millions of people in the Northeast and southern Canada without power.
"That network is inadequate," said William H. Sanders, director of the university's Information Trust Institute. "Today, people are trying to patch it. But those patches will not get us to where we need to be."
The Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid project will be centered at the UI's Urbana-Champaign campus. Researchers from Cornell University, Dartmouth College and Washington State University will work with UI scientists and power industry representatives on the project.
"It addresses what we feel is a significant national problem," said Carl Landwehr, director of the NSF's Cyber Trust program, which provided the grant that was awarded Monday. "I believe the solutions that will be addressed will apply not only to the power grid but to the entire problem of implementing secure computer systems."
About 15 utilities and other companies in the power industry will advise the research team "to make sure the research stays relevant," Pete Sauer, a UI professor who is the project's liaison to industry, said Wednesday.
"This is really an opportunity to take some significant funding coming from NSF and put the industry perspective on it," said Jim Crane, manager of research and development for Exelon Energy Delivery LLC. "So the money's not wasted, and it ensures that the work that's done is practical and can be embedded into the tools we're developing for use on our systems."
The Aug. 14, 2003, blackout was blamed on a tree that shorted out a power line in Ohio and began a cascade of failure that affected people as far away as Connecticut and exposed the vulnerability of the nation's power distribution system.
That system was interconnected piece by piece over decades, leaving weaknesses and gaps in control. After the 2003 blackout, President Bush called the system "antiquated."
"The risk is truly serious," Sanders said. "Although the blackout of a couple years ago was purely accidental, a significant factor in that blackout was deemed to be the information infrastructure and the software that was controlling the grid."
The blackout and its aftermath exposed weaknesses that could make the power grid vulnerable to terrorism, Sanders said. For example, a subsequent investigation revealed that in January 2003 an Internet worm disabled computers that monitored an idled nuclear power plant and blocked commands that operated other power utilities.
The research will focus on developing controls and sensors for a new computer network for the power grid system, protocol for sharing information and technology for keeping that information trustworthy and secure.
As the research progresses, the scientists plan to demonstrate how their new technology can work in real situations, Sanders said.
"Our goal at the end of the five years is to have a demonstration that will show how the various pieces work with one another to make things secure and reliable," he said.
Be the first to comment on this article!