A Generic Role Based Access Control Model for Wind Power Systems

The electrical power infrastructure is facing a transition from a largely centralised distribution infrastructure with a few large power plants to an increasingly distributed infrastructure that must incorporate privately owned and operated power generation units based on fuel cells or sustainable energy sources, such as wind turbines, solar energy or wave energy.

This introduces important new security challenges that are not adequately addressed by existing approaches to security in the electrical power distribution infrastructure. In this paper we examine some of the security challenges that may arise in the emerging energy distribution infrastructure. In particular, we examine the security problems that arise in the area of wind power communication infrastructures based on the IEC 61400-25 and IEC 62351 standards.

These standards define ways of representing elements of the wind power infrastructure in a software domain in a manufacturer independent manner as well as establishing secure communication and authenticating the other parties in electrical power infrastructures, but they do not address the problem of access control.

We therefore propose a generic model for access control in wind power systems, which is based on the widely used role-based access control model. The proposed model is tested using a prototype designed in conformance with the standards that are in use in modern wind power infrastructure and the results are presented to determine the overhead in communication caused while adhering to the proposed access model.