Quantum computing is a game-changing technology that affects modern cryptography and security systems including distributed energy resources (DERs) systems. Since the new quantum era is coming soon in 5–10 years, it is crucial to prepare and develop quantum-safe DER systems. This paper provides a comprehensive review of vulnerabilities caused by quantum computing attacks, potential defense strategies, and remaining challenges for DER networks. First, new security vulnerabilities and attack models of the cyber-physical DER systems caused by quantum computing attacks are explored. Moreover, this paper introduces potential quantum attack defense strategies including Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), which can be applied to DER networks and evaluates defense strategies. Finally, remaining research opportunities and challenges for next-generation quantum-safe DER are discussed.

With high penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs), power systems are increasingly transforming into distributed power grids, which provide grid automation, decarbonization, and decentralization of critical assets. Smart inverters are key power-electronic devices that connect renewable energy and energy storage equipment to power grids. DER includes several intelligent grid functions, such as fault ride through, grid-voltage support, and reactive-power compensation, typically with real-time remote access, data exchange, and seamless over-the-air firmware updates in a cyber-physical environment. However, cybersecurity concerns arise due to extensive information exchange among DER and multiple stakeholders (e.g., utilities, aggregators, vendors, operators, and owners). Therefore, smart inverters account for a growing attack surface for the power grid. This article reviews the cybersecurity best practices and current recommendations for smart inverters and explores emerging cyber threats for smart inverters, including malware attacks and hardware attacks. Finally, we propose a new smart inverter security and resilience framework for developing cyber-resilient smart inverters against the advanced/future threat actors. This article establishes a resilience-by-design baseline reference for smart inverter cybersecurity teams, which bridges the gap between cybersecurity and power-electronics’ communities.

Grid resilience has become a paramount concern in today’s dynamic energy landscape, wherein the mass integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) plays a crucial role in achieving flexible and resilient power grids. A DER management system (DERMS) is a remote monitoring and control system managing DERs in a distribution system, which is becoming increasingly important for a DER-rich power grid. However, an outstanding issue is a single point of failure of the centralized DERMS by cyberattacks, which threatens grid stability and results in regional power outages in the worst case. This paper proposes a novel approach to address the resilience challenges faced in the centralized DERMS through the development of a blockchain (BC)-assisted resilient control mechanism. The main idea is to create a virtual DERMS monitoring and control using BC smart contract and network that takes over seamlessly in the event of a failure of the DERMS. This BC system enables securely sharing DER and grid data among BC clients and provides control commands to DERs when the DERMS is a denial-of-service condition. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed BC-assisted DERMS, voltage and frequency control recovery cases are tested in a real-time hardware-in-the-loop DER system testbed.