• Ragazzi E., Stefanini A., 2019, Are security standards for electricity infrastructure a good choice for Europe? Evidence on cost and benefits from two case studies. International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, Vol. 15, No. 3, p. 206-226.

    Power system controls are vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Several cyber-security frameworks could be adopted for their protection, but it is rather difficult to anticipate implementation costs and benefits, and this hampers their generalised adoption. This paper focuses on the outcome of two case studies (concerning the Italian power generation and the Polish transmission systems). The socio-economic impact of failures and the costs of standard adoption are estimated on an objective basis. It is up to public authorities to decide whether to require the adoption of security standards to operators in the electric system. The nature of public good of security underlines the necessity of public support for this operation, but we discuss the extent and the management of this support.

 

  • Abrate, G., Bruno, C., Erbetta, F., Fraquelli, G., & Lorite-Espejo, A. (2016). A choice experiment on the willingness of households to accept power outages. Utilities Policy, 43, 151-164. 

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957178716302491

    This work provides an evaluation of the Willingness to Accept power outages by households. The analysis is based on a choice experiment proposed to a sample of Italian families and determines an average value of 25.37 euro per kWh of lost load. Outage duration and household characteristics affect the point estimates of this value.

 

  • Bruno, C., Guidi, L., Lorite-Espejo, A., & Pestonesi, D. (2015). Assessing a potential cyberattack on the Italian electric system. IEEE Security & Privacy, 13(5), 42-51. 

    https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7310800

    This paper provides an analysis of a hypotetical cyberattack on the Italian electric system. Under particular scenarios of grid weakness, the effects can include a blackout, with relevant economic damages.