Hardware/Software architecture to investigate resilience in energy management for smart grids*

In the age of digitization, for critical infrastructures arises new challenges due to the amount of data to handle, the increasing automation level and threats to cybersecurity. Resilience of critical systems, i. e., to be prepared for and to prevent threats, to protect systems against them, to respond to threats and to recover from them, rises in priority. Here, we present a hardware-software architecture design for energy management systems as part of critical energy infrastructures, which is scalable, distributable, parallelizable and adaptable. Therefore, it is capable to handle the increasing amount of data but it also allows an in-depth monitoring. This enables the investigation of the impact of diverse threat scenarios like technical errors, human failure and cyber attacks. Thus, it is the basis for developing resilient algorithms, improved communications channels and monitoring mechanisms for energy management systems.