Introduction   To further explore the potential influence of malfunctions in the information network on the power operation systems and assure that the results are replicable and acceptable,

    Method   the research established a lightweight co-simulation measure of the cyber-physical system in power substations based on the open-source environments. According to the topology of the power monitoring system, a virtualization framework of substation process level through Mininet was firstly built, and, in virtual hosts, the models from Scapy were imported to define the malfunctions in the communication system. Then, the calculation functions were modified automatically based on the simulation results from the Mininet-based virtualization framework. Finally, the stable/transient computing cores of PSD-BPA were externally called to produce stability results, and the lightweight CPS co-simulation platform was eventually obtained.

    Result   The simulation results suggest that the time delay of around 64% of links is increased more than 10 times and the operation time of the protective relay is postponed at least 12 cycles. According to the transient-stability-based index proposed in the research, multiple substations will engage serious out-of-step failures during the calculation period.

    Conclusion   The impacts of malfunctions of the information network on the power energy system are quantified based on the screening results using the proposed transient-stability-based index.