Advancing AI for Cyber Defense in Power Grids: Detection,Explanation, and Resilience

The Distinguished Speaker Webinar Series aims to advance state-of-the-art concepts and methods in artificial intelligence and cyber security. It is jointly hosted by the Center for Cyber Security and AI Research and the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS) at the University of North Dakota College of Engineering & Mines.

Abstract:
Modern AI can harden power grids against evolving cyber-physical threats by combining rapid detection, transparent explanation, and resilient, operator-guided response. This talk introduces NREL’s Cybersecurity Situational Awareness Tool (CySAT), deployed at grid-edge devices to monitor distributed energy resources (DERs) and microgrids in real time. CySAT blends physicsinformed learning with multi-modal grid data to detect diverse attack types, from sensor tampering to malicious control actions. To improve performance while protecting privacy, we integrate federated machine learning so sites and utilities can collaboratively train models without sharing raw data. Every alert is paired with explainable AI (xAI) that surfaces root causes, highlights influential features, and delivers operator-readable context—building trust and accelerating decision-making. We then demonstrate an anomaly-mitigation layer that uses deep reinforcement learning to recommend or automate containment and setpoint adjustments under zero-trust and operator-in-the-loop principles. Finally, we showcase validation results from the NREL CyberRange hardware-in-the-loop environment, highlighting measurable gains in detection accuracy, false-alarm reduction, and recovery time across realistic grid scenarios.

Biography:
Dr. Vivek Kumar Singh is a Senior Researcher for the Cybersecurity Research Center within National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He leads technology commercialization projects, including collaborations with industry vendors and initiatives focused on developing cybersecurity tools and technologies to secure distributed energy resources (DERs). Vivek is working on developing secure AI algorithms with privacy preserving methods to develop anomaly detection and mitigation approaches for the power grid. He worked at Idaho National Laboratory in the Power and Energy Systems group in the year 2020-2021. He is also involved in proposal writing and development with internal partners and partners from other national laboratories. His research interests include cyber-physical security for smart grid, wide-area monitoring, protection, and control (WAMPAC), hybrid energy storage systems, AI security, and cyber-physical federation testbeds. He has received awards from the US Army Research Laboratory, North American SynchroPhasor Initiative (NASPI), and Iowa State University. He has published research papers, patents, software disclosure records (SDRs), and featured in several media articles. He received