Large language model question answering over power-grid models must respect a fixed context budget. We introduce seed-anchored graph rendering, a deterministic method that prioritizes query-local graph evidence without adding method-specific tuned or learned parameters beyond the shared hop bound and context budget. The method provides a checkable condition under which predefined seed-local answer-bearing render units are preserved in a greedy bounded-context prefix. We evaluate the approach on Common Information Model (CIM) network models exchanged through the Common Grid Model Exchange Standard (CGMES). On two budget-binding CGMES encodings, naive descriptions-first rendering retains local evidence for every single-hop item but only 0.12 and 0.00 of multi-hop items, whereas seed-anchored rendering retains all such evidence. On a preregistered fresh 100-item bank from the SmallGrid topology family, accuracy rises from 0.450 to 0.970 under a fixed 8,000-character context budget. Under a common retrieval and rendering pipeline, the standards-native seed-anchored graph matches or exceeds extracted graph representations produced by LightRAG, Microsoft GraphRAG, and HippoRAG, while avoiding LLM graph-construction tokens. The results are specific to the evaluated CIM/CGMES models, reader, and context budget; they concern budget-bounded retrieval rather than general question answering.
Large language model (LLM)-assisted energy-management tools can translate natural-language context into structured grid commands, but syntactic validity does not imply physical admissibility. This paper presents TwinGridShield, a model-independent runtime authorization layer that evaluates each proposed action in a deterministic network twin before release. The prototype checks connectivity, branch-flow, generator, and load-shedding invariants and records each decision in a hash-chained log. A controlled IEEE 14-bus study evaluates single-step switching, redispatch, and load-shedding actions using DC power flow and experimentally assigned branch ratings. In the matched-model experiment, a stochastic proposal source configured to select an unsafe action with probability p=0.84 produced 421 unsafe proposals in 500 attacked-condition trials, a realized rate of 84.2%. This value characterizes the configured surrogate and is not an empirical measurement of LLM prompt-injection susceptibility. TwinGridShield produced 0 unsafe releases in those 500 trials. Because action labeling and authorization used the same DC model, system state, branch ratings, and encoded constraints, this result verifies conformance of the implementation to its encoded authorization predicate rather than safety under model error. The principal robustness evaluation therefore introduces model mismatch. Unsafe acceptance reached 5.63% under bounded +20% and -20% per-bus load-measurement error and 30.09% when actual branch ratings were 20% below modeled ratings.
Synthetic power-grid scenarios are essential for planning, resilience assessment, contingency analysis, and data-driven power-system applications. Recent synthetic grid generation methods have improved structural realism and operational feasibility by incorporating engineering knowledge through post-generation validation, optimization, or physics-aware generation. However, generated scenarios may still exhibit low AC feasibility and robustness, limiting their practical value for downstream power-system studies. This paper proposes a feasibility-aware distribution-learning framework that learns the AC-operable joint distribution of network topology, branch electrical parameters, and time-varying load profiles. Instead of enforcing feasibility after generation, the proposed framework incorporates AC power-flow convergence and operational constraints into hierarchical diffusion-based distribution learning. This enables the generator itself to produce operationally feasible grid scenarios through efficient diffusion sampling. The hierarchical architecture decomposes the high-dimensional generation task into three engineering-motivated stages: topology and bus-attribute generation, branch-parameter generation conditioned on the generated structure, and load-profile generation conditioned on both network structure and electrical characteristics. Experiments on benchmark systems demonstrate that the proposed framework significantly improves operational feasibility and contingency robustness while maintaining strong statistical fidelity and eliminating optimization-based post-processing.
Charilaos Papaioannou, Ioannis Tsantilas, Dimitris Giannakakos +9cs.LG cs.AI
Single-task fine-tuning of graph neural networks (GNNs) for power grid problems exhibits a systematic failure mode: models that achieve the lowest in-distribution error degrade the most under topology shift. We term this topology overfitting: the tendency of task-specific gradient signals to encode relational structure particular to the training topologies rather than the underlying physics, causing models to fail on unseen grids despite strong in-distribution performance. To expose and address this failure mode, we introduce MxGPS (Multiplex GPS), a multiplex graph transformer that runs K task-specialised GPS branches over a shared node encoder, jointly trained on Static State Estimation (SSE) and AC Power Flow (PF) via a self-supervised pre-training and multi-task fine-tuning protocol, with a cross-branch attention module evaluated in ablation. The joint SSE+PF objective forces the shared encoder to simultaneously satisfy complementary gradient signals, preventing it from overfitting to topology-specific relational structure. Under a 3-fold sliding-window cross-validation spanning four unseen topologies (14-, 24-, 162-, and 300-bus), MxGPS attains 0% boundary violation rate (BVR) on all four zero-shot Power Flow topologies. Critically, models with substantially lower in-distribution PF error degrade by 190% to 1400% under topology shift, whereas MxGPS degrades by only 39%, an inversion that directly implicates topology overfitting as the failure mechanism rather than insufficient model capacity. With only 1.6M parameters (12x fewer than the GridFM reference baseline), MxGPS demonstrates that multi-task joint training is a principled and parameter-efficient mechanism for topology-agnostic generalisation in power grid foundation models.
This position paper explores how Agentic AI and Model Context Protocol (MCP) can support power-grid studies in a Transmission System Operator (TSO) context. We focus on integrating Large Language Models with numerical simulation tools, structured workflows, and human supervision. We identify key industrial requirements for agent assisted grid studies and introduce pypowsybl-mcp, an MCP-based interface exposing selected capabilities of our simulation tool, pypowsybl to AI agents. This first step provides a testbed to study how agents can setup simulations, execute analyses, retrieve results, and interact with power-system simulators through standardized tool calls. We also discuss principles for human-in-the-loop, multi-agent workflows and outline an evaluation strategy combining technical metrics and practitioner feedback. The paper positions MCP-based tool integration as a step toward more interactive, auditable, and scalable grid-study environments.
Post-hurricane damage assessment and repair scheduling can require computationally intensive simulation and optimization. This paper presents an integrated two-stage deep-learning tool for rapid damaged-line identification and repair-schedule computation. An available offline synthetic dataset for the IEEE 9500-node test feeder contains 1,700 hurricane scenarios with exposure features, grid metadata, fragility parameters, OpenDSS outputs, damaged-line labels, and Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search reference schedules. Stage 1 benchmarks MLP, ResMLP, and GraphSAGE, while Stage 2 compares MLP, DeepSets, and Set Transformer. The selected ResMLP-Set Transformer pipeline propagates Stage 1 errors into Stage 2 and achieves a damaged-job F1-score of 0.920, pairwise order agreement of 0.854, and start- and end-time mean absolute errors of 4.349 min and 4.486 min, respectively. The tool provides rapid initial repair-log decision support for new hurricane cases.
Understanding the complex topology and hierarchy of urban power grid is crucial for energy prognosis, power flow management, and system resilience analysis. However, detailed grid information remains largely proprietary. This creates significant barriers for research and innovation, especially when analyzing the last-mile distribution networks connecting individual buildings. This paper addresses this challenge by developing an open-data-driven framework for the complete identification of urban power grid topology, from high-voltage transmission down to individual building connections. Particularly, we fuse public infrastructure data (power-lines, substations, transformers, poles) to map the high and medium-voltage skeleton using graph-based algorithms. We then leverage geospatial machine learning on OpenStreetMap building data to group power demand clusters, and infer the physical topology of the final distribution lines linking the clustered buildings. We apply the developed framework to the district of Alna in Oslo, Norway, and we reconstruct the complete grid topology that connects 7,330 buildings and all major electricity infrastructure assets. With the research in this work, we provide a critical tool that facilitates power system analysis, e.g., power flow optimization, cascading failure simulation, and grid resilience against the penetration of distributed renewable generation.
Farhin Farhad Riya, Shahinul Hoque, Yingyuan Yang +2cs.LG
Deep Neural Networks DNNs have achieved remarkable accuracy in various tasks including their application in CyberPhysical Systems CPS for detecting False Data Injection Attacks FDIA during critical operations However the unique infrastructure of CPS makes DNNs vulnerable to exploitation by attackers aiming to evade detection Additionally the distinct nature of CPS presents challenges for conventional defense mechanisms against FDIA This paper proposes an innovative defense framework that strengthens DNNs against such attacks by introducing an additional input layer that performs padding in the input samples using pseudofeature values derived from the inputs statistical distribution This padding increases the input dimensionality in a randomized and dataaware manner making adversarial attacks computationally infeasible due to the nontransferable nature of crafted perturbations and the unpredictability of the padded structure Our method is lightweight modelagnostic and requires no modifications to the core architecture making it highly deployable in realworld CPS settings We evaluated our framework on critical power grid applications such as state estimation using the IEEE 14bus 30bus 118bus and 300bus systems Experiments under adversarial settings demonstrate that our padding strategy significantly improves model robustness with negligible impact on performance and effectively mitigates attacks that would otherwise bypass conventional defenses
Eduardo Jr Piedad, Eduardo Prieto-Araujo, Oriol Gomis-Bellmunteess.SP cs.LG math.SP
Operational disturbance monitoring in power networks requires decisions to be made from waveform windows as they arrive, rather than from completed records after the event. This study evaluates full-vector Wigner--Ville Distribution Slice (WVDS) spectra for sequential anomaly-onset detection in high-voltage grid-voltage waveforms. The approach keeps the bilinear midpoint interaction structure of the Wigner--Ville distribution and represents each 128-sample voltage window by a 128-dimensional slice spectrum, avoiding manually selected fault-frequency markers. WVDS is used with a baseline-normalized deviation (BND) score and is compared against the BND of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT-BND), raw-window autoencoders, FFT autoencoders, and WVDS autoencoders under the same thresholding and three-window persistence rule. A synthetic autoencoder--clustering teacher is used to select RTE fault records that start from an initially normal region and then transition to anomalous behavior. On the filtered test set, FFT-BND achieves the highest sensitivity, whereas WVDS-BND provides the lowest false-alarm operating point, reducing record-level pre-onset false alarms to 0.69%. The autoencoder comparison follows the same selectivity pattern: WVDS reconstruction decreases false alarms relative to FFT reconstruction but misses more examples. The results indicate that preserved WVD cross-term information can form a selective representation for online grid-waveform anomaly monitoring when false alarms are costly.