Large Language Models for Detecting Cyberattacks on Smart Grid Protective Relays

This paper presents a large language model (LLM)-based framework that adapts and fine-tunes compact LLMs for detecting cyberattacks on transformer current differential relays (TCDRs), which can otherwise cause false tripping of critical power transformers. The core idea is to textualize multivariate time-series current measurements from TCDRs, across phases and input/output sides, into structured natural-language prompts that are then processed by compact, locally deployable LLMs. Using this representation, we fine-tune DistilBERT, GPT-2, and DistilBERT+LoRA to distinguish cyberattacks from genuine fault-induced disturbances while preserving relay dependability. The proposed framework is evaluated against a broad set of state-of-the-art machine learning and deep learning baselines under nominal conditions, complex cyberattack scenarios, and measurement noise. Our results show that LLM-based detectors achieve competitive or superior cyberattack detection performance, with DistilBERT detecting up to 97.62% of attacks while maintaining perfect fault detection accuracy. Additional evaluations demonstrate robustness to prompt formulation variations, resilience under combined time-synchronization and false-data injection attacks, and stable performance under realistic measurement noise levels. The attention mechanisms of LLMs further enable intrinsic interpretability by highlighting the most influential time-phase regions of relay measurements. These results demonstrate that compact LLMs provide a practical, interpretable, and robust solution for enhancing cyberattack detection in modern digital substations. We provide the full dataset used in this study for reproducibility.