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Abstract Enhancing the resilience and reliability of power grids is crucial amid rising cyber threats and system complexities. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an energy‐efficient, consortium blockchain‐based global alarm system for power grid management. Using smart contracts and the proof of‐authority consensus algorithm, the alarm system triggers global alarms upon detecting local anomalies, ensuring a prompt response to partition the power grid and mitigate failures. The effectiveness is validated by simulating the Iberian power system with 15 providers from various regions. Key metrics, such as load shedding, damage reduction, energy consumption, latency, and transaction costs, are used to assess the performance. Through simulations, we show that the blockchain‐based system effectively limits the damage propagation and the load shedding during cascading failures by delaying the onset of instability and maintaining lower damage levels compared to non‐blockchain scenarios. Our investigations reveal that the proposed global alarm mechanism reduces the damage and load shedding by up to 29% and 87%, respectively, showcasing its potential for preventing widespread outages. 

Distributed energy resources (DERs) are gaining prominence due to their advantages in improving energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, and enhancing grid resilience. Despite the increasing deployment, the potential of DERs has yet to be fully explored and exploited. A fundamental question restrains the management of numerous DERs in large-scale power systems, “How should DER data be securely processed and DER operations be efficiently optimized?” To address this question, this paper considers two critical issues, namely privacy for processing DER data and scalability in optimizing DER operations, then surveys existing and emerging solutions from a multi-agent framework perspective. In the context of scalability, this paper reviews state-of-the-art research that relies on parallel control, optimization, and learning within distributed and/or decentralized information exchange structures, while in the context of privacy, it identifies privacy preservation measures that can be synthesized into the aforementioned scalable structures. Despite research advances in these areas, challenges remain because these highly interdisciplinary studies blend a wide variety of scalable computing architectures and privacy preservation techniques from different fields, making them difficult to adapt in practice. To mitigate this issue, this paper provides a holistic review of trending strategies that orchestrate privacy and scalability for large-scale power system operations from a multi-agent perspective, particularly for DER control problems. Furthermore, this review extrapolates new approaches for future scalable, privacy-aware, and cybersecure pathways to unlock the full potential of DERs through controlling, optimizing, and learning generic multi-agent-based cyber–physical systems. 

The digital transformation of power system introduces False Data Injection Attacks (FDIAs) on voltage stability that compromises the operational integrity of power grids. Existing detection mechanisms for FDIAs often fall short as they overlook the complexities of cyberattacks targeting voltage stability and rely on outdated models that do not capture the dynamic interplay between power system operations and potential threats. In response to these gaps, this paper proposes a novel FDIA detection method designed specifically for voltage regulation vulnerabilities, aiming to enhance the voltage stability index. The proposed method utilizes an unsupervised learning framework capable of identifying cyberattacks targeting voltage regulation. A bi-level optimization approach is put forward to concurrently optimize the objectives of both attackers and defenders in the context of voltage regulation. The effectiveness of this approach is validated through comprehensive training and testing on a variety of attack scenarios, demonstrating superior generalization across different conditions. Extensive simulations on the Iberian power system topology, with 486 buses, show that the proposed model achieves more than 93% detection rate. These results highlight the robustness and efficacy of the proposed strategy in strengthening the cyber resilience of power systems against sophisticated FDIA threats on voltage stability. 

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