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Interdisciplinary Education through “Edu-tainment”: Electric Grid Resilient Control Systems Course

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Conference

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Seattle, Washington

Publication Date

June 14, 2015

Start Date

June 14, 2015

End Date

June 17, 2015

ISBN

978-0-692-50180-1

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary Engineering Division Poster Session

Tagged Division

Multidisciplinary Engineering

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

14

Page Numbers

26.1012.1 - 26.1012.14

DOI

10.18260/p.24349

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/24349

Download Count

596

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Paper Authors

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Timothy R McJunkin Idaho National Laboratory Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-4987-9170

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Timothy R. McJunkin is research engineer at Idaho National Laboratory in the Energy and Environment Science and Technology Division, since 1999. He is also an adjunct instructor at Idaho State University, teaching control systems and resilient controls systems. Prior to joining INL, he was a design engineer at Compaq Computer Corporation in Houston Texas. Mr. McJunkin is the principal architect of the Grid Game developed for the Resilient Control Systems class.

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biography

Craig G Rieger Idaho National Laboratory

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Craig Rieger, Ph.D., P.E., is the lead for the Instrumentation, Control, and Intelligent Systems distinctive signature area, a research and development program at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) with specific focus on next-generation resilient control systems. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Montana State University in 1983 and 1985, respectively, and a Ph.D. in Engineering and Applied Science from Idaho State University in 2008. Rieger is a senior member of IEEE and has 20 years of software and hardware design experience for process control system upgrades and new installations. Rieger has also been a supervisor and technical lead for control systems engineering groups having design, configuration management, and security responsibilities for several INL nuclear facilities and various control system architectures.

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Brian K. Johnson University of Idaho, Moscow Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-0747-2794

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Brian K. Johnson received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992. Currently, he is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Idaho (Moscow, Idaho). His interests include power systems applications of power electronics, power systems protection and relaying, resilient operation of power systems, applied superconductivity, and power systems transients. Dr. Johnson is a registered professional engineer in the state of Idaho.

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D. Subbaram Naidu P.E. Idaho State University

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Dr. D. Subbaram Naidu did his graduate (M.S. & Ph.D.) work in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis in Control Systems at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Professor Naidu held various positions with IIT, the Guidance and Control Division at NASA Langley Research Center, Old Dominion University, the Center of Excellence for Control Theory at the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Center of Excellence for Ships and Ocean Structures (CESOS), Measurement and Control Laboratory at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Universities of Western (at Perth) and Southern (Adelaide) Australia, and East China Normal University. Professor Naidu was most recently with Idaho State University (ISU) during 1990-2014. Professor Naidu joined the University of Minnesota, Duluth on August 25, 2014 as Minnesota Power Jack Rowe Endowed Chair for Energy and Controls, and as Professor in Electrical Engineering.

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Lawrence H Beaty

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John F. Gardner Boise State University

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Gardner is Director of the CAES Energy Efficiency Research Institute (CEERI) and professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at Boise State University, where he has been a faculty member since 2000. Through CEERI he leads research, outreach, and educational efforts to promote the efficient and effective use of energy. Gardner is also a commissioner for the City of Boise Public Works Commission. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Cleveland State University in 1981, and his M.S. and Ph.D. (all in Mechanical Engineering) from Ohio State in 1983 and 1987, respectively. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed research papers, 2 textbooks and has been awarded 3 US Patents. He is a registered professional engineer in the state of Idaho and a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

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Indrajit Ray Colorado State University

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Dr. Indrajit Ray is Professor of Computer Science at Colorado State University. Ray's main research interests are in the areas of computer security models, risk models, security protocols and architectures, trust models, privacy, and the psychology of security. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in nationally- and internationally-known technical journals and conferences. His research has been supported by the NSF, the US AFOSR, the AFRL, and the FAA. He was one of the founding members and the first Chair of the IFIP TC-11 Working Group 11.9 on Digital Forensics. He is a senior member of the IEEE and IEEE CS, and a member of ACM, ACM SIGSAC, and IFIP WG 11.3.

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Katya L Le Blanc Idaho National Laboratory

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Katya Le Blanc is a human factors scientist with eight years of experience conducting psychological and human factors research. She has been at INL for four years, where she has led research in designing technological systems that meet human needs. She has a wide range of research interests, including human-automation interaction, human-computer interaction, interface design and evaluation, learning and memory, and metacognition. She holds a B.S. in psychology from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, an M.A. in cognitive psychology from New Mexico State University, and is a Ph.D. candidate in cognitive psychology at New Mexico State University.

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Michael Guryan Idaho Regional Optical Network, Inc.

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Abstract

Multidisciplinary Education through “Edu-tainment”: Electric Grid Resilient Control Systems CourseAs energy companies and governments attempt to get more from the existing power grid andother energy infrastructure, more automatic control systems are being applied. With this greaterreliance on computer-based automation and stresses of pressing existing infrastructure for greaterperformance, the power grid and underlying systems become more susceptible to maliciousattacks and unexpected, natural threats. Governments and other stake holders have begun toaddress these issues by implementation of a smart grid, where existing loads can be more readilymonitored and controlled, allowing the existing power generation, distribution and utilization tobe performed more efficiently. However, the complexity arising with such extended monitoringand controlling requires a clear understanding of the human and automation system interactions,which are necessary to bring resilience to the overall grid design. In addition, the cybervulnerability of these systems has been illustrated in many recent articles on state-sponsoredattacks to electric power systems and other similar infrastructure for natural gas, water andcommunications. It is therefore critical in the next generation of emerging control systems thatresilience plays a large and critical role in the grid design and development. As a necessarycontributor, the paradigm of education should reflect this need, and while other electricalengineering and computer science programs in the nation have included a cyber securityperspective, few if any have focused on the unique control system aspects. Certainly, humancognitive aspects are most definitely not addressed in technology education discourse. The basisfor holistically considering these challenges is based upon the field of resilient control systemsand the necessary technologies (Figure 1).Benefiting from an already ongoing interdisciplinary field of study, a remote course across Idahowas created to establish a perspective for college students on the unique challenges ofautomation in our society. Students from multiple disciplines, ranging from college juniors tograduate students, arrive at an intuitive perspective on the control, human, and cyber securityaspects of the electric grid through a game-ified simulation. Understanding of the multiplechallenges and failure modes in energy infrastructure is achieved intuitively through the“GridGame” (Figure 2). That intuitive “study”, though important in its own right, is aimed atdeveloping curiosity to engage students in attacking the underlying details of the various aspectsaffecting the technology outcomes. Thus, the course has the potential to lead to the desiredacademic and social outcomes: more broadly developed engineers and scientists with knowledgeof the connective “language” between the distinct disciplines. Looking to a future grid withrenewable energy sources, students are allowed to consider varying methods to effectivelystabilize their grid using advanced control strategies to achieve grid efficiency and resiliency.Through mentor-guided projects that allow students to creatively enhance resilience to a powergrid by designing their own enhancements, students will develop project proposals associatedwith their recommendations.Figure 1 Resilient Control System Framework 1. Figure 2. GridGame Screen Capture

McJunkin, T. R., & Rieger, C. G., & Johnson, B. K., & Naidu, D. S., & Beaty, L. H., & Gardner, J. F., & Ray, I., & Le Blanc, K. L., & Guryan, M. (2015, June), Interdisciplinary Education through “Edu-tainment”: Electric Grid Resilient Control Systems Course Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/p.24349

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