Estimation-Based Protection of Shunt Reactors Against Cyberattacks Using Dynamic State Estimation

This paper analyzes cyberattacks on shunt reactors in transmission systems using estimation-based protection (EBP) built on Dynamic State Estimation (DSE). Unlike conventional protective relays that are vulnerable to cyberattacks and measurement errors, the proposed EBP integrates real-time measurements with a reactor-bank dynamic model. It targets attacks such as current-transformer (CT) and potential-transformer (PT) ratio tampering and GPS spoofing. Detection uses residual-based hypothesis testing, where the residual is the difference between measured and model-predicted quantities. We model a 115-kV reactor-bank test system, generate COMTRADE data under multiple attack scenarios, and assess secure operation. The COMTRADE files were analyzed to identify the attack type and to validate secure decision logic. The scheme detected attacks within one cycle and avoided mis-tripping by excluding compromised data.