Assessing the Cyber-Attack Resilience of Coordinated Virtual Synchronous Generator Microgrids via Real-Time Control Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing

Microgrids are increasingly built around power-electronic interfaces whose coordination depends on digital communication, and this dependence exposes them to malicious manipulation of data in transit. Because analytical and purely software studies cannot reproduce the timing, quantization, and execution effects of real controllers, credible vulnerability assessment calls for test benches in which physical hardware and emulated networks operate together. This paper describes such a bench for two parallel grid-forming inverter-based resources (IBRs) that jointly feed a shared point of common coupling (PCC). The electrical network runs on an OPAL-RT OP4610XG real-time simulator, each inverter is governed by a virtual synchronous generator (VSG) law executed on a Texas Instruments F28379D digital signal controller, and the exchange of control and measurement signals is routed through a time-synchronized EXata CPS network emulator. False data injection is applied to both a frequency setpoint and a PCC power measurement. Results obtained with a reference-driven configuration and with the hardware VSG closing the loop show that, while setpoint tampering visibly perturbs PCC voltage and power in the former, the latter keeps the operating point essentially unchanged, confirming the value of the proposed platform for real-time cyber–physical resilience studies.